Katy Perry blasted off into space on Monday morning (April 14) with an all-female crew on a Blue Origin rocket. The flawless lift-off from the Jeff Bezos-owned company’s West Texas facility on a perfect blue sky day found the space tourists hurtling through the atmosphere at nearly mach 3.
In the lead-up to the flight, CBS aired footage of the women sitting in the windows of an SUV and waving to the gathered crowds as the were driven up to the launch pad. Nearly three minutes into the flight, the crew module separated from the booster, sending the rounded cone into near space approximately 62 miles above Earth in the area called the “Kármán line,” an imaginary boundary that’s viewed as the dividing lien between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
The all-female flight had Perry joined by Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, as well as CBS Mornings co-anchor Gayle King, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen and producer and entrepreneur Kerianne Flynn. CBS News cameras captured the moment when the capsule separated from the booster, with King’s longtime best friend, Oprah Winfrey, bursting into tears of joy at King’s accomplishment.
The crew experienced about three to four minutes of weightlessness before the fliers strapped back in for their descent back to Earth. CBS aired broken audio of the crew marveling at the sight of Earth from space, as well as footage of the booster returning to Earth for a soft, perfectly upright landing.
At the eight and half minute mark the capsule’s parachutes deployed and viewers could hear screams of joy from within the nose cone as they made a soft touchdown in the desert. Within minutes, Blue Origin staffers raced to the capsule in trucks filled with the fliers’ friend and family to celebrate the trip.
Bezos opened the hatch on the capsule and greeted Sanchez with a big hug and kiss as she emerged, with Perry emerging and appearing to thrust a tiny daisy into the air in an apparent tribute to daughter Daisy Dove before dropping to her knees to kiss the ground.
Speaking to 11 Alive afterwards, King said she was “still floating” from the experience. “I still can’t accept that word [astronaut]. I can’t even believe what I saw. When someone calls this a rocket ride… this was not a ride. What happened to us was not a ride. This was a bona fide frickin’ flight.” The news anchor also noted that her flight instructor said King was her most successful student ever because she’d never had one who was so afraid of flying. “I’m so proud of me right now!”
King also noted that Perry sang a bit of the Louis Armstrong classic “What a Wonderful World” as the fliers strapped back into their seats for the return to Earth. “We’d been asking her to sing the whole time and she wouldn’t,” King said. “Everybody said, ‘sing ‘Roar,’ sing ‘Firework,’ but she said ‘it’s not about me. I wanted to talk about the world.’”
“I feel super connected to love,” a beaming Perry said after touching down. “So connected to love. I think this experience has show me you never know how much love is inside you, how much love you have to give, and how loved you are until the day you launch.” The singer teared up upon hearing how proud her daughter Daisy was watching Perry launch into the atmosphere, holding up the live daisy she carried with her.
“Daisies are common flowers, but they grow through any condition,” she explained. “They crow through cement, they grow through cracks, they grow through walls. They are resilient. They are powerful, they are strong, they are everywhere. Flowers are to me God’s smile, but they are also a reminder of our beautiful Earth and… the beautiful magic that is everywhere. All around us, and even in a simple daisy. So to really appreciate it and remember it and take care of it and protect it.”
Perry said she sang “What a Wonderful World” — which she has covered in the past — in favor of one of her songs in honor of the “collective energy in there, it’s about us, it’s about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging. And it’s about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth.”
Asked to describe the trip afterward, Sanchez said she couldn’t find the words. “I looked out the window and we got to see the moon… the full moon… Earth looked so quiet. It was just quiet.” Asked if it was what she’d expected, Sanchez said “no… better. I don’t think you can describe it.”
In an interview with the crew after their final training on Sunday, CBS sat down with the women and asked them to describe how they were feeling in one word. Perry chose “worthiness,” while Gayle King went with “blessed,” as well as “surrender.” She explained, “this is such an unlikely place for me to be and so in my mind I’ve said okay, I feel well-prepared for this moment after the training we’ve had for the last couple of days. But it still hasn’t eased the fear that I have.”
Asked what surprised her about the training — which she’s been doing in between rehearsals for her upcoming world tour — Perry joked “so many seatbelts!” Perry, 40, was also asked if she planned to sing in space and she said she had an idea that would not be “about me or for me. It will be for the beautiful Earth that we get to see. Because I think the perspective that we’re all gonna walk away from is like, ‘oh my gosh, we have to protect our mother. Fiercely.”
Speaking to the AP last week, Perry explained her reason for taking the trip. “I am talking to myself every day and going, ‘You’re brave, you’re bold, you are doing this for the next generation to inspire so many different people but especially young girls to go, “I’ll go to space in the future.” No limitations,’” said the singer. “I’m really excited about the engineering of it all. I’m excited to learn more about STEM and just the math about what it takes to accomplish this type of thing.”
Check out footage of the launch below.
