First-ever all-women space tourist rocket successfully returns to Earth after a short flight

A group of six women, including U.S. singer-songwriter Katy Perry, blast off into the upper limits of Earth’s atmosphere today on a rocket from Blue Origin and successfully returned after a short flight. Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos launched the New Shepard’s 11th Human Flight, NS-31 spacecraft from western Texas at around 7 pm, Indian Time. It was the first all-women tourist spacecraft since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo flight in 1963.

The passengers were carried to more than 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, beyond the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space during the flight The flighted lasted to some 10 minutes. The fully automated



craft rose vertically before the crew capsule separated in mid-flight, then returned to the ground in a fall braked by parachutes and a retro rocket in Texas Desert.

Other crew members includes TV presenter Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, founder of a campaign group against sexual violence, and Lauren Sánchez, a former journalist and fiancée of Jeff Bezos.

New Shepard is a fully reusable sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism by Blue Origin. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, who became the first American to travel into space and the fifth person to walk on the Moon.