A half-dozen celebrities became astronauts today after a Blue Origin rocket carried them just beyond the edge of space. The flight, which featured an all-women crew, delivers a healthy (and needed) dose of positive publicity for Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Lauren Sánchez, a journalist who is engaged to Jeff Bezos, is one of the women who made the trip to space this morning.
“It is the highest high,” singer Katy Perry said to CNN upon landing. “I couldn’t recommend this experience more.”
Other members of the crew include STEMBoard CEO and former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, film producer Kerianne Flynn, CBS journalist Gayle King, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen. It’s a star-studded flight crew that made for a high-stakes flight. If the space tourism rocket, known as New Shepard, had suffered a catastrophe, the blowback on Blue Origin would have been intense. But by delivering the celebrities safely back to Earth, the company now has the world’s attention.
The New Shepard has a successful track record and has carried celebrities before, though this will likely be its most famous run for some time. To reach space, the New Shepard flew past the 62-mile-high Kármán line (100 kilometers), which is the generally accepted point dividing Earth and space. In fact, the flight reached 107 kilometers above sea level and lasted for 10.5 minutes. During the trip, the astronauts were able to experience weightlessness and unbuckle from their seats.
The New Shepard, designed for space tourism, uses a hydrogen-fueled, reusable rocket engine (known as BE-3PM) to launch the crew capsule. The engine returned to Earth and safely landed on its pad. At the end of the fight, the crew capsule, supported by parachutes, also landed safely in the desert.
Flight NS 31 Mission Patch
Flight NS-31 mission patch. Credit: Blue Origin
The crew was allowed to bring objects known as zero G indicators. The item floats, signaling (in addition to the ship’s indicators) that the astronaut can float. Nguyen, who is a sexual assault survivor, brought her hospital bracelet. Katy Perry brought a daisy.
Lauren Sánchez joins her fiancée, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in the still small but rapidly growing number of Earth’s astronauts. Blue Origin has put both young and old people into space, including Wally Funk, a well-known aviation instructor who was a member of the canceled Mercury 13 space program. She reached space at age 82 on the New Shepard mission with Jeff Bezos. Her record as the oldest person in space was later broken by actor William Shatner, who was 90 years old when he took his flight to space on New Shepard.