Pop star Katy Perry and five other women launched space on a blue original rocket and successfully returned to Earth on Monday, marking all the first female spaceflights in more than 60 years.
The crew picked up from West Texas at ET (1331 GMT) at 9:31 am and traveled to the edge of the space, where they experienced a brief period of weightlessness before returning to Earth in a 11 -minute flight, according to live broadcast by Blue Origin, the space company established by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Spaceflight was a high-profile success for Bezos’ new Shepard launch vehicle, developed for space tourism.
The six-person crew included Bezos’ fiancé Lauren Sanchez, CBS host Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Boway, scientist Amanda Guyen and filmmaker Karian Flynn.
Bezos was seen hugging Lauren Sanchez as she came out of the capsule after returning to Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csqyrwqoojm
King said that when the crew returned to its seats after weightlessness, Perry sang the Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World”.
“I feel associated with love,” Katy Perry said after getting back to Earth.
Perry was catching a Daisy, a flower she had taken into space to remind her of her daughter Daisy.
Among the celebrities famous in the presence of the launch pad, a close friend of the king was a tear Opra Winfrey, and the business personality Krrish Jenner and Khlowe Kardashian.
This was the first All -Female Spaceflight since the first woman in space – the first woman in space – the first woman in space during a three -day single flight in 1963.
Blue Origin does not disclose the average cost of the seat on one of its rockets. On its website, the company says that potential passengers have to pay $ 150,000 as a refundable deposit to start the “order process”.
In 2021, the company revealed the highest bid for a seat on its new Shepard spacecraft, which was $ 28 million. The same year, “Star Trek” actor William Shatter flew free as a guest of Blue Origin.
In 2018, Reuters reported that the company was planning to charge at least $ 200,000 passengers for the ride.
Blue Origin says that its purpose on its website is to reduce the cost of access to space, designed for re -purposes with its rockets.
The strategy at the Warwick Business School in Britain and the organization’s professor, Loizos Harkalas estimates that each launch of the new Shepard cost is cost between $ 1 to $ 3 million.
“Even ignoring the development cost, there are six seats, so each passenger will have to pay about half a million US dollars to be an economically viable business,” said Harakalas. “Space will take a long time before tourism, an economically sustainable business can be available for the public on a large scale.”