Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has launched pop singer / songwriter Katy Perry into space, along with five other women: former NASA scientists Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen, journalist Gayle King, journalist and Bezos fiancée Lauren Sánchez, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Their flight, called NS-31, launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket as its launch window opened at 8:30AM CT / 9:30AM ET. It was livestreamed both on YouTube and Blue Origin’s website.
Past New Shepard flights have taken passengers just to the edge of space, where they’re allowed to unbuckle and roam freely for a few minutes inside the capsule before buckling up again for re-entry. The capsule then deploys a parachute and touches back down in west Texas. Seven minutes after today’s launch, the New Shepard rocket itself touched back down on its landing pad, while the capsule carrying Blue Origin’s passengers touched down more than three minutes after that.
In a video posted to Instagram before the flight, Perry said she plans to make a “special reveal coming to you from zero gravity.” She posted an earlier video touring the capsule that she and the others will be aboard, and said she will probably sing in space. Whatever that reveal was, it wasn’t audible on the livestream, which cut out a few times while we were watching.
This is Blue Origin’s 31st New Shepard launch. The rocket’s last flight was in February, and previous tourists aboard New Shepard flights include William Shatner, and 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who was America’s first astronaut candidate, but who never made it to space.
