Blue Origin’s first all-women flight crew launched on April 14 to fly 62 miles above Earth’s surface to the Kármán line. After returning from a 10-minute journey, newly anointed astronauts Gayle King, Katy Perry, journalist Lauren Sánchez, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen discussed their historic trip into space.
Blue Origin’s flight crew took off at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, and the well-covered event picked up on the screams of excitement from inside the capsule.
CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King recalled, “I can’t even believe what I saw.”
As CBS News reported, Blue Origin was not only the first all-women flight into space, but Bowe made history as the first Bahamian and Nguyen, the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman to enter space.
“I got chills. I got tears in my eyes…the enormous burst of sound, CBS Mornings host Vladimir Duthiers said as he watched the rocket blast off.
Another senior CBS national correspondent claimed that he heard “Katy Perry singing up there,” which King later confirmed.
As the Blue Origin excursion blasted off, Perry sang Louis Armstrong’s “What A“Wonderful World.”
After the rocket safely returned to Earth, the women reflected on their 10-minute journey to the Kármán line.
King stepped out of the shuttle and kissed the ground, stating, “I just have to have a moment with the ground…to appreciate the ground for just a second. That was amazing.”
She continued, “You look down at the planet, and you think, ‘That’s where we came from?’ To me, it’s such a reminder about how we need to do better — be better. I’ll never, ever, ever forget it.”
Sánchez described the experience as emotionally “profound” for her.
“You look back at Earth, and it’s this beautiful jewel. It was quiet. It felt like it was breathing. It was so alive,” Sánchez explained during a news conference featuring all the crew a few hours after landing.
The Blue Origin New Shepard space program is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to fly in space. The program, which brought King, Perry, Sánchez, Flynn, Bowe, and Nguyen to space, is designed to transport citizens to space in a completely reusable suborbital rocket.
Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin and has been hailed as paving the way for more accessible human flights into space.
The recent all-women’s mission is the 11th human flight to blast off under Bezos’ New Shepard program.
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