Katy Perry has returned from space. The musician boarded Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company Blue Origin’s spacecraft New Shepard this morning to participate in the first all-female space flight since 1963, when cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
New Shepard took off from “Launch Site One” in West Texas during a launch window that opened at 8:30 a.m. CT. Perry was joined onboard by fellow voyagers Gayle King, activist Amanda Nguyen, movie producer Kerianne Flynn, and entertainment reporter (and Bezos’ fiancée) Lauren Sánchez. Aisha Bowe, a former NASA aerospace engineer, was also on the flight, which marks Blue Origin’s 31st overall flight and 11th suborbital flight with humans aboard.
The voyage spanned approximately 11 minutes. During a livestream of the event, only audio was available from inside the spacecraft. At multiple points during liftoff and landing, the occupants of the capsule could be heard screaming. The women were allowed to unstrap from their seats for about four minutes to experience weightlessness before buckling up for their return.
The flight only travelled just above the Kármán line 330,000 feet above sea level, defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale as the edge of space. The spacecraft didn’t travel at a speed fast enough to stay in space, instead breaching the barrier just enough for it to count as a visit to outer space before coming back down to Earth.
The launch drew a small crowd of celebrities including Oprah, Kris Jenner, and Khloe Kardashian, who came to watch the event.
Perry felt something supernatural about the trip before she even took off. On Sunday, April 13, the pop singer shared a video reflecting on receiving the opportunity to go to space, something she has said was a dream she’s had for 15 years. “I’m always looking for little confirmations from the heavens, from my guides, from my angels, from my higher self,” she said. “When I ask for it and I’m open to it, it’s pretty loud.”
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Perry noted that when she looked up the capsule, she noticed an outline on it in the shape of a feather. “When I saw that, it was like a total confirmation, because my mom has always called me feather,” she said. But the signs didn’t stop there. During another round of space training, she continued, she learned the name of the capsule: Tortoise. “The most energetic wave just shot through my body, and I was like, whoa,” she said. “My mom calls me two nicknames, feather and tortoise.”
The singer added that she doesn’t believe in coincidences, especially not when “I’m going to space on a rocket in a capsule with my symbol, the feather, called tortoise, and my mom calls me tortoise.” She even shared screenshots of messages her mom sent her using the nickname. “I’m just so grateful for these confirmations, and so grateful that I feel like something bigger than me steering the ship,” Perry said.
