Pop star Katy Perry may need to update the lyrics to her hit song Firework to, «Baby, you’re an astronaut.» On Monday, Perry became one of the latest celebrities to visit space. Author and former journalist Lauren Sanchez was also part of Blue Origin’s successful NS-31 mission.
Aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyễn, film producer Kerianne Flynn and CBS host Gayle King (Oprah Winfrey’s bestie) filled out the roster for the all-female crew. Winfrey attended the launch as an observer.
The crew rolled to the launchpad in Rivian electric trucks and took an elevator up to board the crew capsule. Bezos personally escorted them to the rocket. The flight lasted about 11 minutes. Perry sang What a Wonderful World during the flight, though choppy audio made it difficult to hear the crew at times during the livestream.
This was the first all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo spaceflight in 1963. Tereshkova was the first woman in space.
Bezos faceplant, Wendy’s teases Perry
Sanchez is the fiancee of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin. He was waiting to greet the crew at the landing site, and apparently stepped in a small hole and fell, almost landing on his face. Social-media replayed the moment over and over.
Wrote one X user, «Excuse me while I watch Jeff Bezos faceplant a million times.»
And for some reason, fast-food chain Wendy’s, known for its witty tweets, took aim at Perry after she landed. The company tweeted a photo of Perry kissing the ground after returning to Earth and captioned it «I kissed the ground and i liked it.» (Perry’s 2008 song, «I Kissed a Girl,» contained the line «I kissed a girl and I liked it.»)
Then, when another X user asked, «She was only up there for like 10mins, right?» the Wendy’s account responded snarkily with, «don’t short change her it was 11 minutes.»
Watch Katy Perry visit space
The New Shepard spacecraft launched from West Texas at about 8:30 a.m. CT on Monday. Relive the mission through Blue Origin’s livestream replay on YouTube.
Does New Shepard reach space?
There’s an ongoing debate about what represents space. For example, everyone agrees the International Space Station is in space but commercial rocket rides like what Blue Origin operates fall into a gray zone. One benchmark is the Karman line, an imagined line 62 miles above the Earth’s surface.
NASA recognizes that «there’s really no clear boundary between where Earth’s atmosphere ends and outer space begins,» but says most scientists recognize the Karman line as the transition point to space. So unless you want to get into a nitpicky argument, Perry and the rest of the crew made a brief visit to space during their mission.
The crew experienced weightlessness after the spacecraft passed the Karman line. The return trip involved a gentle parachute-assisted landing of the crew capsule.
This was the 11th human flight for the New Shepard program. Blue Origin had previously flown 52 people into space, including Star Trek’s William Shatner, Good Morning America host Michael Strahan and Bezos.