Blue Origin's NS-31 Mission Launches All-Female Crew, Including Katy Perry, for 11-Minute Spaceflight

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space company, successfully launched its first all-female crew into space on Monday morning from its West Texas launch facility. The NS-31 mission, marking the company's 11th human spaceflight, carried six women, including singer Katy Perry, TV journalist Gayle King, and Bezos's fiancée Lauren Sanchez. The launch occurred at 8:30 a.m. CDT. The flight, which lasted around 11 minutes, took the crew to an altitude of 100 km, just above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space. During the journey, the participants experienced four minutes of weightlessness before safely returning to Earth, landing in the Texas desert. After the flight, Katy Perry sang a few lines of 'What a Wonderful World'. This mission is the first all-female spaceflight since Valentina Tereshkova's solo mission in 1963. The crew included former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, research scientist Amanda Nguyen, and movie producer Kerianne Flynn. The event attracted VIPs such as Oprah Winfrey and members of the Kardashian family.