The first flight by a female crew of Blue Origin, starring singer Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos' girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, has been successfully completed. The Bezos-owned aerospace company's aircraft took off at 9:30 a.m. today from the Texas desert and the flight into space lasted 11 minutes.
The VIP crew aims to encourage women to follow their dreams and pursue careers in science, but it actually looks like a high-end bachelorette party.
Alongside Sànchez were singer Katy Perry, television host Gayle King, the historic face of CBS Morning, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, and Nobel Peace Prize-nominated civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen.
Not since Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly solo in space in 1963, has a space crew been made up entirely of women. However, this time they are civilians, space tourists, rather than professional astronauts.
Dressed in tight blue spacesuits, the six VIP women boarded the New Shepard rocket to experience the experience of crossing the edge of Earth's atmosphere together. The mission lasted just 11 minutes, the time needed to cross the Kármán line (the symbolic boundary of space) at an altitude of 106 kilometers and experience the thrill of weightlessness for a few minutes. The thrill was accompanied by laughter and shouts of joy as they reached Earth, while Bezos followed them with fear in his eyes during the ascent.
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Three minutes after liftoff, the capsule separated from the rocket, which returned to Earth. The spacecraft, however - completely autonomously - continued its journey until reaching the set altitude. In the fourth minute of the flight, the passengers unbuckled their seat belts to float in weightlessness and admire the Earth, experiencing approximately three minutes of microgravity. As planned, the capsule gently returned to Earth in a parachute landing near the launch site in the West Texas desert. The capsule's reentry, with three parachutes to slow the descent, also went according to plan.
New Shepard - 18 meters long - is an autonomous, unmanned vehicle, equipped with an engine called the BE-3 that allows it to travel in space at up to four times the speed of sound (Mach 4) and return to base, slowing to 8 kilometers per hour.
The capsule is equipped with large windows for enjoying the view and has already taken several celebrities to space, including Jeff Bezos himself, Star Trek actor William Shatner, former NFL quarterback Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to fly in space. Jeff Bezos himself inaugurated the era of space tourism with the July 20, 2021 flight.
Lauren Sanchez designed the space suit herself, with the help of two designers, Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, co-founders of the company Monse, who are creative directors of Oscar de la Renta.
“ We reinvented the astronaut suit ,” Sanchez explained, commenting on the fact that the suits are very tight. “ I think the suits are elegant ,” Ms. Bezos said. The dark blue suits are emblazoned with a NASA logo, one with their last name and the Blue Origin logo down the arm. (A2 Televizion)
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