Female only crew launches into space — but it's actually not the first time
Six women recently hurtled into space aboard a Blue Origin rocket, where they glimpsed the Earth from above and briefly slipped the bonds of gravity. But, they weren't the first female-only crew to voyage into the final frontier, experts said.
The intrepid mission took place on April 14, beginning at a ranch in west Texas, where Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has a launch site.
The crew — including pop star Katy Perry, TV personality Gayle King and Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sanchez — blasted off in a New Shepard rocket at 8:30 a.m. local time.
Within minutes, the automated rocket reached a maximum height of 346,802 feet or about 65 miles, surpassing the Kármán line, the commonly recognized dividing line between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
In a video posted by Blue Origin, the six women can be seen floating in the rocket's capsule, with the Earth and the moon visible from the windows.
After detaching from the rocket booster, the capsule fell back to Earth — buoyed by parachutes — and touched down at 8:40 a.m.
Asked to detail the experience at a press conference afterward, Sanchez called it 'profound,' adding, 'I'm completely and utterly humbled...'
Describing the view of Earth from space, King said, 'It's a neon blue, and it's still and it's quiet … I know I will never forget it.'
It was Blue Origin's eleventh human flight into space — and only the second female only trip.
First female only trip to space
'I can confirm that this was the second ever all female space launch,' Brian Odom, NASA's chief historian, told McClatchy News.
The first such flight occurred in 1963, when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was launched on a solo mission aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6, becoming the first woman in space and the only woman to ever go alone.
The vessel was piloted automatically, so she never took control over its flight, according to Space.com.
The total flight time lasted about 70 hours, during which Tereshkova — who was 26 years old — orbited Earth 48 times.
'Tereshkova's televised image was broadcast throughout the Soviet Union and she spoke to Khrushchev by radio,' according to the European Space Agency. 'She maintained a flight log and performed various tests to collect data on her body's reaction to spaceflight.'
After about three days, the spacecraft landed near Karaganda, a city in Kazakhstan, according to NASA.
Comparing Tereshkova's flight to the female-only Blue Origin trip 'is a stretch,' Roger Launius, NASA's former chief historian, told McClatchy News.
Tereshkova's 'mission was the first of its kind, and it represented space exploration, emphasis on exploration, in the fullest sense of the term,' he said.
In contrast, the Blue Origin flight was 'up and down only' and it left Earth's atmosphere for 'only a few minutes,' Launius said. 'It is not really space exploration but rather space tourism, and there have been many, many women before the current flight going to space.'
Since Tereshkova's mission, dozens of women — including many American astronauts — have gone to space, according to the University of California.
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