Blue Origin launches all-woman New Shepard suborbital flight

WASHINGTON — Blue Shepard launched six women, including a pop star and TV show host, on a suborbital flight of the company’s New Shepard vehicle April 14.

New Shepard lifted off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas after a problem-free countdown. The vehicle’s capsule, RSS Kármán Line, reached a peak altitude of 106 kilometers before landing 10 minutes and 21 seconds after liftoff.

The NS-31 mission, the company’s 11^th crewed suborbital flight, flew a routine profile but with a unique complement of spaceflight participants. It was the company’s first mission to carry only women, and the first all-woman spaceflight of any kind since Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space on a solo flight in 1963.

The six people on NS-31 were:

• Aisha Bowe, a former NASA engineer who founded engineering and education technology companies;
• Kerianne Flynn, a filmmaker who works with several non-profit organizations;
• Gayle King, co-host of the “CBS Mornings” television program;
• Amanda Nguyễn, a scientist and advocate for sexual violence survivors;
• Katy Perry, the famous pop singer; and
• Lauren Sánchez, pilot and former journalist who is the fiancée of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.

The nature of the flight attracted far more attention than usual, including a 90-minute pre-flight webcast by the company. The six spaceflight participants also wore customized flight suits, designed by a fashion brand and commissioned by Sánchez, with different materials and tailoring than those used on previous New Shepard flights. Guests at the launch included Oprah Winfrey and members of the Kardashian reality TV family.

That added attention, though, brought with it some criticism about the flight. Actress Olivia Munn questioned the purpose of the flight in an NBC interview April 3: “What are they going to do up there that has made it better for us down here?” In a New York Times op-ed April 9, writer Jessica Grose contrasted the flight with the firing of NASA Chief Scientist Kate Calvin, concluding that the “morally vacuous space stunt should be another nail in the coffin of celebrity feminism.”

While the focus was on the celebrities on the flight, the mission did include a little science. Sánchez carried a small payload from Teachers In Space, an educational organization, with sensors to collect data for use by students and teachers in educational projects.

This was the third flight of New Shepard this year, after the NS-30 crewed flight Feb. 25 and the payload-only NS-29 flight Feb. 4 that spun the capsule to simulate lunar gravity for experiments on board.

Dave Limp, chief executive of Blue Origin, said at the Commercial Space Conference in February that the company remains committed to New Shepard even as it begins launching its New Glenn orbital rocket and works on other projects, like the Blue Moon lunar lander. That included strong interest in what he called the “profound experience” of suborbital spaceflight.

“I do believe New Shepard will be a very good business for us,” he said then.