All-female space mission inspires younger generation

The all-female crew included:

• Aisha Bowe, former NASA rocket scientist
• Amanda Nguyen, bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist
• Gayle King, award-winning journalist
• Katy Perry, global pop superstar
• Kerianne Flynn, film producer
• Lauren Sánchez, award-winning journalist and fiancée of Jeff Bezos

This mission was the 11th human flight for the New Shepard programme and the 31st in its history. To date, the programme has flown 52 people above the Kármán line, the internationally recognised boundary of space. This is the first all-female flight crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight in 1963.

Kerianne Flynn recalled a moment before the flight when her son told his friends about her upcoming trip. Their response: "Mums don't go to space."

Smiling, she told the BBC: "This mum went to space."

Amanda Nguyen expressed her gratitude, saying she felt "so grateful to everyone who made it a reality."

Spectators on the ground spoke of the emotion surrounding the launch. From the viewing platform, Khloé Kardashian told the BBC: "I didn't realise how emotional it would be, it's hard to explain. I have all this adrenaline and I'm just standing here."

During the flight, the capsule reached speeds of 2,300mph, around three times the speed of sound.

Despite requests from fellow passengers for Katy Perry to perform her own hits such as ‘Firework’ and ‘Roar’, she chose instead to sing a rendition of Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’. Explaining her choice, she said: "It's about a collective energy, making space for future women, it's about the wonderful world we see out there." She has told reporters that she plans on writing a new song about her experience. 

Aisha Bowe described a powerful moment inside the capsule: "You could feel the energy," she told the BBC, recalling how the crew simply looked at one another in shared awe after reaching space.

Astrophysicist and Machine Learning Researcher at the University of Nottingham, Maggie Lieu, reflected on the significance of the mission: "It's inspiring little girls and women to go and do STEM activities, because it's crazy how we haven't had an all-female crewed mission to space since 1963, and that was a solo mission. Now you've got a team of these hugely inspirational women showing that any girl can go to space. I think it's great."

The mission marked a meaningful step for representation in space exploration and offered a message of possibility to a new generation.