Lauren Sánchez says it 'was a feeling of joy' to go to space with the first all-female crew
Blue Origin/via REUTERS
- Lauren Sánchez launched to the edge of space on a Blue Origin rocket Monday morning.
- It's the first all-female crew since 1963 when Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
- Sánchez said she was "so proud of this crew" for their bravery.
Jeff Bezos' fiancé Lauren Sánchez made history on Monday, becoming part of the first all-female crew to launch toward space in the 21st century. The last time was in 1963 when cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, and Kerianne Flynn joined Sánchez on the flight.
"It was a feeling of joy and camaraderie. It was a feeling of gratefulness. It was a feeling that we're doing this," Sánchez said shortly after returning to Earth.
"Alan Shepherd did this same exact flight and he became the first American in space, and six women just did the same flight," she added.
The journalist and helicopter pilot rode Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, which takes space tourists to 62 miles above Earth's surface — to the Kármán line, which is the internationally recognized boundary between space and our planet.
Sánchez and the five other women experienced weightlessness for a few moments before heading back. Looking out of the rocket's windows in those few moments of zero-G, Sánchez said she felt connected.
"Earth looked so, it was so quiet," she said adding that, "You look at it and you're like — we're all in this together. That's all I could think about, like, we're so connected, more connected than you realize."
Sánchez said she was proud of her fellow crew members' bravery while venturing into the unknown.
"Gayle doesn't even have ear piercings, she's so afraid to do anything. And she got in that capsule, and I think it profoundly changed her," Sánchez said.
Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has been launching tourists to space since New Shepard's maiden crewed flight in 2021. Bezos founded Blue Origin with the idea to help move heavy, polluting industries off our planet and into space.
This goal is still a long way off but the company is making progress.
In addition to New Shepard, the company recently flew its new mega-rocket New Glenn for the first time. New Glenn is an orbital rocket designed to lift heavy payloads to space and the moon.