American pop singer Katy Perry completed a brief voyage into space on Monday in a Blue Origin space capsule as part of a six-member, all-female crew.
The official Instagram handle of Blue Origin, which is a private space technology company owned by American businessman Jeff Bezos, shared a video of the six-women crew including Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, Kerianne Flynn and Lauren Sánchez, on their outer space expedition.
The video captured the crew experiencing the thrill of weightlessness in zero gravity as Blue Origin’s space capsule travelled to an altitude of over 100 kilometres, slightly beyond the Karman line, which is the internationally recognised boundary of space.
The crew remained there for 12 minutes before descending back to Earth. The singer performed Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World and carried a daisy along with her, a flower she brought aboard as a tribute to her daughter, Daisy.
After returning to Earth, Katy Perry kissed the ground, marking her safe return from the expedition.
“I think this experience has shown me you never know how much love is inside of you, like how much love you have to give and how loved you are until the day you launch,” she said.
The journey, also known as the New Shepard programme, is the 11th sub-orbital crewed operation by Blue Origin, which is an outer space programme offered to tourists for several years. On the journey, tourists can experience weightlessness for a brief time by unbuckling their seat belts and can float in zero gravity.
“We just completed our 11th human spaceflight and the 31st flight of the New Shepard program. The astronaut crew included Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez. To date, New Shepard has flown 58 people to space,” Blue Origin wrote on X, sharing the picture of the women crew standing in front of the rocket.
So far, 58 passengers have travelled more than 95 kilometres above Earth with Blue Origin since it began crewed missions in 2021.
Though the space expedition grabbed the eyeballs of the public with many praising and celebrating the milestone as an empowering moment for women, few netizens criticised the mission, billing it as ‘waste’ of resources.
“Why are we hyping up wives of billionaires going up into space for 6 minutes while the world crumbles and people are starving,” wrote a social media user on X.
While another post reads, “People should not be going to space unless it’s for important research or a big project because it just does so much damage to the planet.”