WASHINGTON — Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space tourism company, launched its latest spaceflight this morning with a historic all-women crew.
Those on board “New Shepard (NS)” include CBS This Morning host Gayle King, pop singer Katy Perry, activist Amanda Nguyen, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, film producer Kerianne Flynn and former TV host Lauren Sánchez, who is Bezos’s fiancée.
This flight is called NS-31.
Each spaceflight lasts about 11 minutes, taking passengers just past the Kármán line — 62 miles above Earth, which some international aviation and aerospace experts consider the threshold of space — allowing the crew to experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
The rocket then descended back to Earth, with its single engine restarting to slow the booster down to just 6 mph for a controlled landing back on the launchpad. The capsule carrying the crew descended separately, deploying three parachutes for its landing nearby.
According to Elle Magazine, Bowe will be bringing up the Apollo 12 flag, courtesy of the Museum of Flight in Tukwila.
Crews have been prepping by taking zero-gravity flight simulations.
It’s unclear how much a seat on the New Shepard costs, but according to its website, there’s a $150,000 fully refundable deposit to begin the process.
In 2022, MoonDAO, marketed as “the internet’s space program,” said it paid about $2.5 million for two seats.
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