Blue Origin Touches Down: Katy Perry, Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez Successfully Go to Space in All-Female Flight

Katy Perry, Gayle King and philanthropist and Jeff Bezos’ fiancé Lauren Sánchez have officially made interstellar history. The three public figures along with three other female astronauts launched into space on Monday on a Blue Origin rocket.

This mission marks the first all-female spaceflight since 1963 when Valentina Tereshkova of the former Soviet Union became the first woman to take a solo mission into space. The other members of the flight included former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.

Altogether, the flight lasted about 10 minutes and 30 seconds. The crew could be heard over the live stream cheering and reacting to seeing the moon. The live feed started to glitch around five minutes in with 305,000 viewers. Despite previously telling the press she would sing in space, Perry did not.

“I’ve never been more proud of my friend than today,” Oprah Winfrey said in an interview on Monday. Winfrey emphasized that her longtime friend, Gayle King, has struggled with flying for years. “This is bigger than going to space … This is overcoming a wall of fear, a barrier.”

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin as well as Sánchez’s fiancé, was the one to open the capsule and welcome the women back to Earth. Both Perry and King were seen kissing the Earth. As for Sánchez, her first words out of the capsule were “Where are my babies?”

Sánchez later said that what she experienced was indescribable but she tried, saying seeing Earth was “quiet but very alive.” She also struggled to hold back tears as she recounted the “feeling of joy” she experienced.

“I’m so proud of this crew. Gayle — we were just talking in the capsule — doesn’t even have ear piercings. She’s so afraid to do anything, and she got in that capsule. I think it profoundly changed her,” Sánchez said. “I hope that more people get to see this because I don’t even know how much it’s going to change me. And I want to thank the Blue Team.”

More to come …

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