Jeff Bezos’s aerospace company Blue Origin launched a high profile all-women crew on its flagship space tourism rocket. The crew includes pop star Katy Perry, and Jeff Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sanchez, as well as CBS’s Gayle King, producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, and Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and advocate for survivors of sexual violence.
The flight launched on Monday at 9:31 a.m. New York time from West Texas on a roughly 11-minute trip for a quick experience of weightlessness, according to media reports.
READ: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches New Glenn rocket (January 16, 2025)
Sanchez first told Vogue about her plans to fly to space with an all-women crew in 2023, saying that her fellow passengers were all remarkable and “paving the way for women.”
Other celebrities who have taken a quick trip to space include Bezos himself in July 2021, actor William Shatner — who was 90 years old at the time — in October 2021 and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan in December 2021.
This is Blue Origin’s eleventh space flight. This comes shortly after Blue Origin successfully completed another trip to orbit on its newer heavy-lift rocket New Glenn in January. In the following weeks, the company laid off around 10% of its workforce. Following the layoffs, CEO Dave Limp said that the company is looking to the future, including landing an unmanned vehicle on the moon in 2025 and increasing the cadence of New Glenn and New Shepard launches.
READ: SpaceX to send first high-speed internet satellite into space in 2019 (November 20, 2017)
Earlier this month, billionaire Elon Musk’s spaceflight company SpaceX launched a commercial polar mission. Cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang, and three others were carried by a Crew Dragon spacecraft, on a days-long trip where they orbited directly above Earth’s north and south poles.
Blue Origin is also part of NASA’s Artemis program, contributing a lunar lander for future moon missions. The company faces growing competition from rivals like SpaceX but remains a key player in the commercial space race.