Gayle King and Katy Perry Make Landmark Space Trip on Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocket

The broadcast journalist Gayle King and the singer Katy Perry made a brief trip into space on Monday on a flight operated by Jeff Bezos’ private company, Blue Origin. It was the first time an all-female crew had been to space since 1963.

Their flight, on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, lasted 10 minutes and 21 seconds and took off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas, about 120 miles southeast of El Paso at 8:30 a.m. local time.

After the flight, Ms. King exited the crew capsule and said, “I would just like to have a moment with the ground,” before kneeling.

Ms. King had spoken before the launch about being afraid of the trip.

“I stepped out of my comfort zone in a way that I never thought was possible for me,” Ms. King said. “And now that I’ve done it, I really do feel I can take on anything, anything.”

Ms. King said that Ms. Perry sang “What a Wonderful World” during the flight.

“It’s not about singing my songs, it’s about a collective energy in there,” Ms. Perry said after they returned to Earth.

It was the 11th human flight for the New Shepard program, which had previously flown 52 people, including repeat astronauts, above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth.

Flights on the New Shepard rocket, which provide for a few minutes of weightlessness, do not have a pilot.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard flies above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, in February. Credit…Justin Hamel/EPA, via Shutterstock

Before the launch on Monday, “CBS Mornings” dedicated a large portion of its broadcast to “Gayle Goes to Space.” Between the show’s typical morning news updates, there was footage from Texas and interviews with people who had been to space, including on Blue Origin flights.

Family members and friends of the flight’s passengers gathered in Texas to watch the launch, including Oprah Winfrey, Ms. King’s close friend. Kris Jenner, the matriarch of the Kardashian family, and her daughter, Khloé Kardashian, were also in the crowd.

Mr. Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, a former broadcast journalist, was also on board the flight, called the NS-31 mission. The couple’s wedding is reportedly set for this summer in Venice.

The other passengers were Aisha Bowe, a former rocket scientist at NASA who told Elle magazine that she is the first person of Bahamian heritage to go to space; Kerianne Flynn, a film producer; and Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and prominent advocate for sexual assault survivors.

Ms. Nguyen was the first Vietnamese woman to go to space, according to Blue Origin.

“It’s a dream come true, and for me it was a dream deferred,” Ms. Nguyen told Elle.

She said that she had worked at NASA and studied astrophysics, but turned her focus to activism after she was sexually assaulted.