The women’s excursion was a short-lived experience that saw them float in space for about three minutes before returning to Earth.
Before boarding the spaceship carrying her and five other women to space, US singer Katy Perry was asked by her fellow passengers to sing her hit song Roar as they returned to Earth.
However, she belted out Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.
“It’s not about me. It’s not about singing my songs,” Perry told the Associated Press after landing back on Earth.
“It’s about a collective energy in there. It’s about us.”
Reminiscent of Makhaya Ntini at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2003, after taking a 10-wicket haul in a Test match against England, singer Perry kissed the ground after landing back on Earth.
She, along with TV host and Oprah Winfrey’s best friend Gayle King, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and Jeff Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, completed a trip to the edge of outer space and returned on Monday.
The sextet’s trip was to the Kármán line, a conventionally defined boundary 100km above sea level, marking the edge of space.
Their excursion was a short-lived experience that saw them float about in space for about three minutes before returning to Earth.
The rocket they were using is owned by Amazon co-founder and commercial space flight entrepreneur Bezos.
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All love
Speaking to her fans on social media about an hour before launch, Perry was elated about the historic moment.
“I have never felt this much love like I have felt today. I feel like my message is, you never know the love that you have inside of you until the day you launch and I am feeling that love,” said the singer.
“I’ve always been interested in astrophysics and interested in astronomy and astrology and the stars.
“We are all made of stardust and we all come from the stars.”
Oprah’s friend King has become the latest victim of her footage being turned into a meme. The meme has Rihanna’s Unfaithful in the background, with a nervous-looking King walking to the ship.
“I didn’t realise I was being photographed at that moment, nor did I realise that my expression looked so terrified. But I was,” said King.
King shared that the passengers were given the option to cancel the trip if they felt they couldn’t continue.
“We were told that if you’re going to back out, you have to do so before 2 minutes and 30 seconds; you have to say ‘I’m not going to fly’. I knew I wasn’t going to be that guy, but getting on it was a little bit scary,” she said.
“The meme shows that I was apprehensive… look at the picture when I got off the capsule, that’s the one that matters,” she said.
Similar to Perry, King bowed and embraced the earth on her return.
Not everyone was excited about the ladies’ short trip to outer space.
“I know this is not the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,” US actress Olivia Munn said. “What are you guys going to do up in space?”
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