TEXAS, April 15: Pop star Katy Perry and five other women launched into space aboard a Blue Origin rocket and successfully returned to Earth on Monday, marking the first all-female spaceflight in more than 60 years.
The crew lifted off from West Texas at 9:31 a.m. ET (1331 GMT) and traveled to the edge of space, where they experienced a brief period of weightlessness before returning to Earth in a flight lasting around 11 minutes, according to a live broadcast by Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The spaceflight was a high-profile success for Bezos’ New Shepard launch vehicle, which has been developed for space tourism.
The six-person crew also included Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, CBS host Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, scientist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
King shared that when the crew returned to their seats after experiencing weightlessness, Katy Perry sang the Louis Armstrong classic “What a Wonderful World.”
“I feel super connected to love,” Perry said after landing back on Earth. She was holding a daisy, a flower she brought into space to remind her of her daughter, Daisy.
Among celebrities in attendance at the launch pad were a tearful Oprah Winfrey, a close friend of King, along with show business personalities Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian.
It was the first all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova—the first woman in space—orbited Earth during a nearly three-day solo flight in 1963.
Blue Origin does not publicly disclose the average cost of a seat on one of its rockets. However, according to its website, potential passengers must pay $150,000 in the form of a refundable deposit to begin the “order process.”
In 2021, the company revealed that the highest bid for a seat on its New Shepard spacecraft reached $28 million. That same year, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner flew free of charge as a guest of Blue Origin.
In 2018, Reuters reported that the company planned to charge passengers at least $200,000 per ride.
Blue Origin states on its website that its goal is to radically reduce the cost of access to space, with its rockets designed for reusability.
Loizos Heracleous, a professor of strategy and organization at Warwick Business School in Britain, estimates each launch of the New Shepard costs between $1 million to $3 million.
“Even ignoring development cost, there are six seats so each passenger would have to pay around half a million USD for this to be a financially viable ongoing business,” Heracleous said. “It will take a long long time before space tourism can be a financially sustainable business available to the public at large.”
