Historic All-Female Spaceflight: Katy Perry's journey to the stars

Pop star Katy Perry and five other women launched into space on a Blue Origin rocket and returned to Earth on Monday, marking the first all-female spaceflight in over 60 years.

The crew lifted off from West Texas at 9:31 a.m. ET (1331 GMT) and traveled to the edge of space, where they experienced a brief period of weightlessness before returning to Earth in a flight lasting around 11 minutes, according to a live broadcast by Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The spaceflight was a high-profile success for Bezos' New Shepard launch vehicle, which has been developed for space tourism.

The six-person crew included Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sanchez, CBS host Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, scientist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

Pop star Katy Perry and journalists Gayle King, Lauren Sanchez, who is also billionaire Jeff Bezos' fiance and other participants, blast off into space on a Blue Origin rocket, as part of the New Shepard Mission NS-31, marking the first all-female flight crew in more than six decades, in West Texas, Texas, U.S., April 14, 2025, in this screen grab taken from a video. Blue Origin/Handout via REUTERS

King said that when the crew returned to their seats after weightlessness, Perry sang the Louis Armstrong song "What a Wonderful World."

"I feel super connected to love," Katy Perry said after landing back on Earth.

Perry was holding a daisy, which she had taken into space to remind her of her daughter, Daisy.

Among the celebrities in attendance at the launch pad were a tearful Oprah Winfrey, a close friend of King, and showbiz personalities Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian.

It was the first all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova - the first woman in space - orbited Earth during a nearly three-day solo flight in 1963.

Blue Origin does not disclose the average seat cost on one of its rockets. On its website, the company says potential passengers must pay a $150,000 refundable deposit to start the "order process."

In 2021, the company revealed that the highest bid for a seat on its New Shepard spacecraft was $28 million. That same year, "Star Trek" actor William Shatner flew free of charge as a guest of Blue Origin.

In 2018, Reuters reported the company was planning to charge passengers at least $200,000 for the ride.

Blue Origin's website states that it aims to radically reduce the cost of access to space, and its rockets are designed for reusability.

Loizos Heracleous, a professor of strategy and organization at Warwick Business School in Britain, estimates that each launch of the New Shepard costs between $1 and $3 million.

"Even ignoring development cost, there are six seats, so each passenger would have to pay around half a million USD for this to be a financially viable ongoing business," Heracleous said. "It will take a long, long time before space tourism can be a financially sustainable business available to the public."