At 9:31 a.m. EDT yesterday, Katy Perry, in full hair and makeup wearing a designer cobalt blue bodysuit, was ready to make history. As she boarded flight NS-31 to make an 11-minute roundtrip journey to the edge of outer space, she endeavored to “put the ass in astronaut.” Which is so cool and brave to admit, given that she’s probably the first person ever to say those words in that particular order.
A little bit about the voyage, for the uninitiated: Perry was accompanied by CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, journalist Lauren Sánchez, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. The mission, which was funded by Jeff Bezos’ private space company Blue Origin, featured the first all-female crew to go to space since Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth alone in 1963. Space travel is something Katy Perry has apparently wanted to do for decades, since she’s always been interested in astrology, astronomy, astrophysics, and Pythagoras, in no particular order. She prepared for the trip, as most astronauts do, by attending space training sessions, “listening to” Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and reading about string theory as she dozed off.
As the rocket launched yesterday, viewers heard what The Mirror described as “maniacal screaming” on the livestream. Some fans worried that Perry and crew might have died, and flooded the stream with prayers and well-wishes. But everything was totally fine. It was better than fine actually: At one point, all the women looked at the camera and defiantly yelled, “Take up space!,” an important reminder that well behaved women rarely make history. Gayle King confirmed upon landing that Katy Perry had followed through on her promise to sing in flight. A bit of a Perry scholar myself, I was sure she would choose “E.T.,” her 2011 hit about an extraterrestrial lover, but Perry was full of surprises, even for me—she chose “What a Wonderful World” rather than one of her own songs because she didn’t want to make the day all about her. This trip was “for the benefit of Earth,” as she put it.
Despite her commitment to putting others first, Perry seems to have gleaned a lot from the whole endeavor. She says she “couldn’t recommend this experience more,” which is useful information for those of us deciding between space travel and booking a basic economy ticket on Spirit that doesn’t let you carry on any luggage so you have to wear 13 layers of clothing onto your flight. Some people—“haters” you might call them—were worried that Perry might face existential panic upon witnessing the beauty of the world given our understanding of imminent climate catastrophe. The world is so beautiful and fleeting, we’re destroying it all, and here I am bearing witness: It’s a lot for a person to process. But Perry proved the haters and ill-wishers wrong. What she realized during her time up in space was that she was connected to her divine feminine and that you never truly know “how loved you are until the day you launch.” Exactly, babe.
