Katy Perry space anniversary
Metro ran an April 14 anniversary piece noting Katy Perry’s space trip a year ago and recalled that in February she was announced as part of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin all‑female crew for a space‑tourism flight. The article framed the appearance as a continuing pop‑culture reference point for commercial space. (metro.co.uk)
A year after Katy Perry rode Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket to the edge of space, the flight is still being used as a shorthand for celebrity space tourism. (metro.co.uk) Blue Origin announced the six-person NS-31 crew on February 27, 2025: Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn and Kerianne Flynn. The company said the mission would be its 11th human New Shepard flight. (blueorigin.com) The launch took place from West Texas on April 14, 2025, with Blue Origin opening the window at 8:30 a.m. Central Daylight Time. Blue Origin later said the mission was completed successfully. (blueorigin.com) This was not an orbital mission circling Earth for days. New Shepard is Blue Origin’s fully reusable suborbital rocket system, built for short trips above the atmosphere before the capsule returns to the Texas desert. (blueorigin.com) ABC News reported the flight lasted about 11 minutes and traveled more than 60 miles above Earth, crossing the Kármán line, the 62-mile mark often used as the boundary of space. The crew then descended back to Earth under parachutes. (abcnews.go.com) Blue Origin said the six women included a former National Aeronautics and Space Administration rocket scientist, a bioastronautics researcher and civil rights activist, a television host, a film producer, Sánchez and Perry. The company said Sánchez “brought the mission together.” (blueorigin.com) The company also framed the flight as a milestone, calling it an all-female crew. Reuters and other outlets noted it was the first all-female space crew in more than six decades since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963. (hindustantimes.com) Perry became one of the most recognizable faces of that mission because she arrived as a global pop star, not an aerospace executive or career astronaut. Blue Origin’s mission patch even used a firework symbol to represent her influence across music, pop culture and philanthropy. (blueorigin.com) After landing, Perry kissed the ground and said she had carried a daisy in honor of her daughter, Daisy. Gayle King said Perry sang “What a Wonderful World” while the group was in space. (abcnews.go.com) That mix of celebrity, branding and a 10-minute commercial flight is why the trip keeps resurfacing a year later. On April 14, 2026, Metro treated the anniversary itself as a culture story, showing how one brief New Shepard launch kept a place in the public conversation long after touchdown. (metro.co.uk)
