A half-dozen celebrities turned astronauts in the present day after a Blue Origin rocket carried them simply past the sting of house. The flight, which featured an all-women crew, delivers a wholesome (and needed) dose of optimistic publicity for Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Lauren Sánchez, a journalist who’s engaged to Jeff Bezos, is among the girls who made the journey to house this morning.
“It’s the highest excessive,” singer Katy Perry mentioned to CNN upon touchdown. “I couldn’t suggest this expertise extra.”
Different members of the crew embrace STEMBoard CEO and former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, movie producer Kerianne Flynn, CBS journalist Gayle King, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen. It’s a star-studded flight crew that made for a high-stakes flight. If the house tourism rocket, generally known as New Shepard, had suffered a disaster, the blowback on Blue Origin would have been intense. However by delivering the celebrities safely again to Earth, the corporate now has the world’s consideration.
The New Shepard has a profitable monitor file and has carried celebrities earlier than, although this can doubtless be its most well-known run for a while. To succeed in house, the New Shepard flew previous the 62-mile-high Kármán line (100 kilometers), which is the commonly accepted level dividing Earth and house. In reality, the flight reached 107 kilometers above sea degree and lasted for 10.5 minutes. Throughout the journey, the astronauts have been capable of expertise weightlessness and unbuckle from their seats.
The New Shepard, designed for house tourism, makes use of a hydrogen-fueled, reusable rocket engine (generally known as BE-3PM) to launch the crew capsule. The engine returned to Earth and safely landed on its pad. On the finish of the struggle, the crew capsule, supported by parachutes, additionally landed safely within the desert.
Flight NS 31 Mission Patch
Flight NS-31 mission patch. Credit score: Blue Origin
The crew was allowed to convey objects generally known as zero G indicators. The merchandise floats, signaling (along with the ship’s indicators) that the astronaut can float. Nguyen, who’s a sexual assault survivor, introduced her hospital bracelet. Katy Perry introduced a daisy.
Lauren Sánchez joins her fiancée, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, within the nonetheless small however quickly rising variety of Earth’s astronauts. Blue Origin has put each younger and outdated individuals into house, together with Wally Funk, a widely known aviation teacher who was a member of the canceled Mercury 13 house program. She reached house at age 82 on the New Shepard mission with Jeff Bezos. Her file because the oldest particular person in house was later broken by actor William Shatner, who was 90 years outdated when he took his flight to house on New Shepard.
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