Katy Perry’s journey to space on Monday (April 14) morning with an all-female crew on a Blue Origin rocket was a historic moment for women in space exploration. The flawless launch from the company’s facilities owned by Jeff Bezos in Texas, under a perfect blue sky, took the space tourists through the atmosphere at nearly Mach 3. Before the flight, CBS broadcasted footage of the women sitting by the windows of an SUV, waving to the gathered crowd as they were transported to the launch pad. Almost three minutes into the flight, the crew module separated from the booster, sending the rounded cone into near space, approximately 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, in an area known as the “Kármán line,” an imaginary boundary considered to be the division between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
On the flight, Perry was accompanied by Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, as well as CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, and producer and entrepreneur Kerianne Flynn. CBS cameras captured the moment the capsule separated from the booster, with King’s best friend, Oprah Winfrey, crying tears of joy for her achievement. The crew experienced between three and four minutes of weightlessness before strapping back in for the descent back to Earth. CBS broadcasted choppy audio of the awe-struck crew marveling at the view of Earth from space, as well as footage of the booster returning to Earth for a smooth and perfectly vertical landing.
At eight and a half minutes, the capsule’s parachutes deployed, and viewers could hear screams of joy from inside the cone as it made a gentle landing in the desert. Within minutes, Blue Origin employees ran towards the capsule in trucks filled with friends and family of the travelers to celebrate the journey. Bezos opened the hatch of the capsule and greeted Sanchez with a big hug and kiss as she emerged, while Perry emerged and appeared to hold up a small daisy in the air in an apparent tribute to her daughter Daisy Dove before falling to her knees to kiss the ground.
Speaking to 11 Alive afterwards, King said she still felt “floating” from the experience. “I still can’t accept that word [astronaut]. I can’t even believe what I saw. When someone calls this a rocket ride… this was not a ride. What happened to us was not a ride. This was an authentic and genuine flight.” The news anchor also pointed out that her flight instructor said King was her most successful student so far, as she had never had someone with such a fear of flying. “I am so proud of myself for overcoming that fear and doing something that I never thought I would do.” King also shared that she was able to FaceTime her daughter during the flight, and her daughter’s reaction was priceless. “She said, ‘Mommy, you’re in space!’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am!’ It was just a beautiful moment.