Pop star Katy Perry on Monday completed a brief foray into space with an all-female crew on one of billionaire Jeff Bezos’ rockets.
The Firework and California Gurls singer was lofted more than 100km above the Earth’s surface in a Blue Origin vessel.
Five other women — including Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sanchez — were on the flight, which took off from western Texas shortly after 8:30am before safely landing again 10 minutes later.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Blue Origin
The flight brought the passengers beyond the Karman line — the internationally recognized boundary of space.
One of the other passengers, TV presenter Gayle King, said Perry sang What a Wonderful World in space.
“It’s a 10 out of 10. That’s my review. Definitely go for it,” the singer said after she was safely back on Earth.
Their fully automated craft rose vertically before the crew capsule detached mid-flight, later falling back to the ground slowed by parachutes and a retro rocket.
The jubilant women then emerged, with Perry kissing the ground after exiting the capsule.
“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 mission was the first all-female space crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo flight in 1963.
It was also the 11th sub-orbital crewed operation by Blue Origin, which has offered space tourism experiences for several years.
The company does not publicly communicate the price of trips made possible by its New Shepard rocket.
They were expected to have a brief period when the women could unbuckle from their seats and float in zero gravity.
Perry, launched onto the international stage with her 2008 hit I Kissed a Girl, was traveling alongside Sanchez, King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen, founder of a campaign group against sexual violence.
They follow 52 previous Blue Origin passengers, including longtime Star Trek leading man William Shatner.
King’s close friend — talk show host Oprah Winfrey — was among those watching the launch in Texas.
“It’s oddly quiet when you get up there ... you look down at the planet and think: ‘That’s where we came from?’ And to me it’s such a reminder about how we need to do better and be better,” King said.
Perry told Elle magazine that she was taking part “for my daughter Daisy,” whom she shares with actor Orlando Bloom, “to inspire her to never have limits on her dreams.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS