Blue Origin flight with all-female crew make history
Florida: A group of six women, including American singer-songwriter Katy Perry, blasted off into the upper limits of the Earth's atmosphere on Monday on a rocket from Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Bezos's fiancee Lauren Sanchez, a US author and philanthropist, also joined the passengers on board the flight, which blasted off from western Texas at around 8:30 am (1330 GMT). The flight took around 10 minutes and the rocket returned safely to the ground by parachute.
The remaining crew included TV presenter Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen, founder of a campaign group against sexual violence.
Monday's venture features the first all-woman space crew since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's historic solo flight in 1963.
10-minute flight to the edge of space
The passengers were carried more than 100 kilometres (60 miles) above the Earth's surface — beyond the Karman line, the internationally recognised boundary of space.
The fully automated craft rose vertically before the crew capsule separated in mid-flight, before returning to the ground in a fall braked by parachutes and a retro rocket.
Perry, known for hits such as "Firework" and "California Gurls," and her co-passengers had the chance to experience weightlessness for a brief period during the trip.
She recently told Elle magazine that she was going on the trip for her daughter, Daisy, whom she shares with actor Orlando Bloom, "to inspire her to never have limits on her dreams."
"I'm just so excited to see the inspiration through her eyes and the light in her eyes when she sees that rocket go, and she goes back to school the next day and says 'Mom went to space,'" Perry added.
Space tourism taking off
Other prominent figures among the 52 previous Blue Origin passengers include longtime "Star Trek" star William Shatner.
But Blue Origin, which does not publicly say how much such a trip costs, aims in future to bring space tourists into orbit, competing directly with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
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