100th person to fly only a suborbital spaceflight
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On April 14, 2025, Blue Origin launched its 11th human spaceflight, the company's first to include only women aboard. Based on the seat assignments provided by the company, one of the six newly qualified astronauts has now become the 100th person in history to fly only a suborbital trajectory to space and back.
The photo captures the moment that former NASA aerospace engineer-turned-entrepreneur Aisha Bowe stepped out of Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule, having completed the 10-minute trip into space and back. She held out her arms in celebration.
Flying alongside five other women, including pop star Katy Perry and TV morning show host Gayle King, Bowe soared past the Karman line, the boundary at 62 miles (100 kilometers) that is internationally recognized as the demarcation between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
Bowe and her crewmates landed in West Texas, not far from where they took off from Blue Origin's Launch Site One, located near the town of Van Horn.
The booster that lofted the New Shepard crew capsule into space also returned to the same site, re-igniting its engine and landing on extended legs to be reused again.
The namesake for Blue Origin's New Shepard launch system, Alan Shepard, was the first American in space and the first person to complete a suborbital spaceflight. His May 5, 1961 Mercury-Redstone 3 launch aboard the Freedom 7 capsule ended in a splashdown in The Bahamas, from where Bowe's family originates.
Shepard later walked on the moon on Apollo 14, so is not included in the 100-person count, but included among Bowe's ranks are X-15 and SpaceShipOne rocket plane pilots and the people who earlier flew on Blue Origin's and Virgin Galactic's space tourism and suborbital science-dedicated flights.
You can read more about Bowe's NS-31 mission and the items that she and her crewmates chose to fly as souvenirs of their journey. You can also read and watch the crew's reaction immediately after returning to Earth.
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