Pop star Katy Perry and journalists Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez β who is also billionaire Jeff Bezos’s fiancΓ©eΒ β blasted off into space on a Blue Origin rocket on Monday.
The launch windowΒ opened atΒ 9:30Β am ET, and the historic crew launched right on time from the company’sΒ West Texas launch site.
The mission consists of the first all-female flight crew in more than six decades. Other crew members include astrophysicist Aisha Bowe, activist and bioastronautics researcher Amanda Nguyen and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.
The New Shepard rocket, an 18-metreΒ suborbital spacecraft, carried the crew to the KΓ‘rmΓ‘n line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, Bezos-owned Blue Origin said in a statement published on Feb. 27.
Passengers experienced a few minutes of microgravity before returning to Earth via parachute-assisted landing in the West Texas desert.
This was the 11th human flight for the rocket and its 31st overall. The last recorded all-female spaceflight was the 1963 solo mission of Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.
