The highly anticipated and much talked about all-female crew of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket touched down safely overnight in Texas.
For just over ten minutes, the six women (Katy Perry, Lauren Sánchez, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn and Kerianne Flynn) were suspended in space in a capsule, experiencing a few moments of weightlessness. They returned in the capsule with a parachute-assisted soft landing, along with the rocket booster, which arrived back on Earth separately.
Upon landing, they were met by a small crowd of family, friends and the media, as well as Jeff Bezos who opened the capsule door to welcome them back, including his fiancée, Sánchez — the first to disembark.
“I’m so proud of this crew,” she said. “I can’t put it into words. I looked out of the window and we got to see the moon. Earth looked so quiet. It was quiet, but really alive.”
Next to emerge from the capsule was Perry, who told reporters she felt “super connected to life” and “so connected to love”.
She got out of the capsule and kissed the Texan dirt, lifting a symbolic flower to the sky — a daisy, a nod to her 4-year daughter, whom she shares with Orlando Bloom, named Daisy.
“Daisies are common flowers, but they grow through any condition,” Perry said. “They are resilient. They are powerful. They are strong.”
“This experience is second to being a mum,” she told reporters after landing.
“That’s why it was hard for me to go because that’s all my love right there, and I have to surrender and trust that the universe is going to take care of me and protect me and also my family and daughter. I am full up from being able to get that gift of being a mum, and to go to space is incredible, and I wanted to model courage, worthiness and fearlessness.”
CBS presenter Gayle King also got on her knees upon disembarking, saying, “I just have to have a moment with the ground…I just need to appreciate the ground for just a second — thank you Jesus.”
“I can’t even believe what I saw,” she told reporters, reflecting on the journey. “I’m so proud of me right now. It’s oddly quiet when you get up there. It’s really quiet and peaceful and you look down at the planet and you think that’s where we came from…it’s such a reminder about how we need to do better, be better, be better human beings.”
Gayle praised the camaraderie of the crew having bonded over the experience, saying, ”We are forever bounded. You can’t go through what we went through to look out for each other and help each other and not be changed by that. It really is a true sisterhood.”
A small cohort of celebrities had watched the launch from the ground, including King’s longtime friend Oprah Winfrey.
“I mean, for her—whew—anytime we’re on a flight, she’s in somebody’s lap at the slightest bit of turbulence,” she described her friend. “She has real, real-world anxiety when it comes to flying. And this… this is her overcoming a wall of fear.”
Khloé Kardashian was also present, telling the media, “I didn’t realise how emotional it would be, it’s hard to explain. I have all this adrenaline and I’m just standing here.”
“Whatever you dream of is in our reach, especially in today’s day and age. Dream big, wish for the stars—and one day, you could maybe be amongst them,” she added.
The New Shepard spacecraft was fully autonomous, which means that the crew were not required to manually operate the vehicle.
“The training was so freaking good,” King told reporters. “We were set up for success. It went exactly as they told us it was going to — every boom that you heard, the parachutes coming out…it went exactly as they said it would.”
Amanda Nguyễn gave an emotional interview after landing, revealing that she’d brought with her on the flight the hospital band she was given in 2013 after she was raped as a student at Harvard University.
“This one I didn’t know I would bring, but I ended up bringing it and floating it,” she said, referring to the hospital band. “I got to honour her today,” the activist added, referring to her 22-year old self. “I’m so grateful to the engineers, the scientists, who have made this a reality.”
Is this ‘female empowerment’?
While the women aboard the Blue Origin rocket were excited by what they’d achieved, the feat has received mixed reactions elswhere.
Businesswoman, podcaster and personal finance expert Tori Dunlap put it succinctly, when she said: “I don’t need to see Katy Perry go to space. I don’t need to see one of the richest men in the world’s fiancee, go to space.”
“Now, the women astronauts who’ve worked their entire lives and careers to go to space. Yeah, go to Jupiter. Love that for you girl, but this is what the billionaires are spending the money on in the in the theme of ‘female empowerment’. No. Do literally anything else with that money,” she said.
“You want to support female empowerment? How about you help support women out of poverty or out of domestically violent situations, or supporting abortion rights? That would be better use of the money.”
Likewise, actor Olivia Munn said she was confused about the purpose of the venture.
“I know this probably isn’t the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,” Munn said. “What are you guys gonna do up in space? What are you doing up there?”
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