Katy Perry blasts into space on all-women flight

AFP | Washington

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Pop star Katy Perry completed a brief foray into space yesterday, roaring to the edge of the cosmos with an all-women crew on one of billionaire Jeff Bezos’s rockets.

The “Firework” and “California Gurls” singer was lofted more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface in a vessel from Blue Origin, the space company owned by the Amazon founder.

Five other women including Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez were on the flight, which took off from western Texas shortly after 8:30 am (1330 GMT) before safely landing again some 10 minutes later.

The flight brought the passengers beyond the Karman line -- the internationally recognized boundary of space.

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.

Monday’s mission is the first all-woman space  crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo flight in 1963.

It is also the 11th sub-orbital crewed operation by Blue Origin, which has offered space tourism experiences for several years.

They were expected to have a brief period when the women could unbuckle from their seats and float in zero gravity.

‘Inspiration’

Perry recently 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.”

“I’m just so excited to see the inspiration through her eyes and the light in her eyes when she sees that rocket go, and she goes back to school the next day and says, ‘Mom went to space,’” Perry added.

She said in a separate video posted to Instagram that she was shocked to discover during space training that the capsule she would travel in was named the “Tortoise” and decorated with a “feather” design -- the two nicknames her parents have for her.

“There are no coincidences and I’m just so grateful for these confirmations and so grateful that I feel like something bigger than me is steering the ship,” Perry said in the video.

Perry, launched onto the international stage with her 2008 hit “I Kissed a Girl,” was also travelling alongside TV presenter Gayle 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.