All-Female Crew Travels to Space and Back

An all-female crew with some big names lifted off into space on Monday on a Blue Origin rocket from Jeff Bezos' company. They blasted off at 9:30am Eastern from the company's launch pad in rural west Texas and returned to Earth about 10 minutes later.

• The six: Pop star Katy Perry, journalist and Bezos fiancee Lauren Sanchez (who is a pilot), journalist Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, and civil rights activist and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen were aboard, per the Guardian.
• Livestream: People were able to watch a livestream via Space.com here. (Oprah Winfrey was among those in attendance, watching friend King.)

• Perry's prep: In an interview with the AP before the flight, Perry said she was "psychologically" preparing by reading the works of astronomer Carl Sagan and others. "I am talking to myself every day and going, 'You're brave, you're bold, you are doing this for the next generation to inspire so many different people but especially young girls to go, 'I'll go to space in the future.'"
• The trip: A 59-foot New Shepard rocket carried the crew to the Karman Line, known as the international boundary line of space, where they experienced a few minutes of microgravity before returning to Earth, explains USA Today. This is the 11th "space tourism" flight by Blue Origin.

(More Blue Origin stories.)