Ground-Kissing Gayle King, Katy Perry, Aisha Bowe And More Make Up 1st All-Female Space Travel Crew In Over 60 Years
On Monday, April 14, the second all-female crew to be blasted off into space in the last 62 years launched and landed safely aboard a rocket operated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company.
According to NPR, Bezos’ fiancé, Lauren Sánchez, was one of the six women who traveled above the atmosphere Monday morning, as were bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyễn, film producer and philanthropist Kerianne Flynn, former NASA rocket scientist and STEM advocate Aisha Bowe (more on her in a sec), and — get this, y’all — Katy Perry and Gayle King. (Yes, that Katy Perry and Gayle King.)
From NPR:
The star-studded crew flew on Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle, which since 2021 has ferried dozens of scientists, entrepreneurs and celebrities above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, about 62 miles above Earth’s surface.
Monday’s mission, NS-31, had garnered considerable attention in recent weeks because of its famous passengers and historic nature.
It was the first all-female spaceflight since 1963, when Soviet-era cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova — the first woman in space — orbited the Earth during a nearly three-day solo flight.
Blue Origin’s flight was significantly shorter, lasting 10 minutes and 21 seconds.
It took off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 9:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, after weeks of anticipation.
BOSSIP just wouldn’t be BOSSIP if we didn’t acknowledge how cool it is to see a couple of Black women launch into space. There’s just no way many of us had “Gayle King, the astronaut” on our 2025 Bingo cards. Oprah Winfrey must have been beside herself.
In fact, according to People, Oprah was among the attendees at the launch site in West Texas, outside El Paso, where she spoke on the Blue Origin livestream about King and her big, fantastic voyage.
“It goes beyond this moment of just going up in space. I think this will be an everlasting experience,” Winfrey said. “Gayle has been there for me for hundreds of events — I can’t even remember them. But none of us will ever forget this day.”
Upon her return, King kissed the ground and spoke about her experience in space.
“It’s oddly quiet when you get up there,” she said. “It’s really quiet and peaceful, and you look down on the planet and think: That’s where we came from? To me it’s such a reminder about how we need to do better, be better.”
While we’re celebrating excellent Black women doing Black excellence things, let’s give a special shout out to Aisha Bowe, who is not only a Black woman who was employed as a rocket scientist by NASA, but also the first person of Bahamian heritage to travel to space.
During a recent interview with Elle, Bowe said she feels like she’s been training for this moment her entire life.
“I wanted to go to space, but I didn’t think it was possible,” she said. “I was afraid to do it. I was afraid to even dream about it. And I started to say to myself, You know what, Aisha? Why are you afraid of the one thing that you’ve waited your entire life to do? Just go do it.”
According to Style, Bowe graduated from Washtenaw Community College before earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering and space systems engineering at the University of Michigan. She recalled in a recent interview that, in high school, a guidance counselor recommended that she pursue a career in cosmetology.
“I mention this not because there’s anything wrong with that field,” she said. “But I like to make people aware that younger individuals – especially children – will internalize what adults think their future looks like.”
So, congrats to King, Bowe, and the rest of the ladies who traveled aboard the Blue Origin’s New Shepard. Salute!
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