Jeff Be­zos’ Blue Ori­gin launched his fi­ancee Lau­ren Sanchez in­to space Mon­day with an all-fe­male celebri­ty crew that in­clud­ed Katy Per­ry and Gayle King.

It was the lat­est wave in space tourism, where more of the rich and fa­mous than ever be­fore — or lucky and well-con­nect­ed — can en­ter the ze­ro-grav­i­ty realm tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by pro­fes­sion­al as­tro­nauts.

The New Shep­ard rock­et blast­ed off on the quick up-and-down trip from West Texas. The fringes of space beck­oned some 65 miles (105 kilo­me­ters) up, promis­ing a few pre­cious min­utes of weight­less­ness.

Sanchez, a he­li­copter pi­lot and for­mer TV jour­nal­ist, in­vit­ed the oth­ers along for the 10-minute, ful­ly au­to­mat­ed flight, pack­ing on the star pow­er with singer-song­writer Per­ry and “CBS Morn­ings” co-host King.

Al­so shar­ing the ride were film pro­duc­er Ke­ri­anne Fly­nn; Aisha Bowe, a for­mer NASA en­gi­neer who start­ed her own com­pa­nies to pro­mote sci­ence ed­u­ca­tion; and Aman­da Nguyen, a sci­en­tist who stud­ied plan­ets around oth­er stars and now ad­vo­cates for sur­vivors of sex­u­al vi­o­lence.

Blue Ori­gin de­clined to say how much the flight cost or who paid what. The trip came two months be­fore Sanchez and Be­zos mar­ry in Venice.

It was the 11th hu­man space­flight for the Wash­ing­ton state-based com­pa­ny, found­ed by Be­zos in 2000 af­ter mak­ing a for­tune with Ama­zon. Be­zos strapped in for Blue Ori­gin’s first space tourist flight in 2021 and ac­com­pa­nied the lat­est crew to the pad.

The celebri­ty launch was the na­tion’s first space­flight where women filled each seat. The on­ly oth­er all-fe­male crew in 64 years of hu­man space­flight was back in 1963. That’s when So­vi­et cos­mo­naut Valenti­na Tereshko­va launched by her­self, be­com­ing the first woman in space. Tereshko­va spent three days off the plan­et.

Even af­ter the lat­est launch, women rep­re­sent bare­ly 15% of the more than 700 peo­ple who have trav­eled in­to space. Sanchez said she de­lib­er­ate­ly chose women to launch with her, each of them ea­ger to in­spire both the young and old to dream big, and even com­mis­sioned spe­cial flight suits.

“It’s an im­por­tant mo­ment for the fu­ture of com­mer­cial space trav­el and for hu­man­i­ty in gen­er­al and for women all around,” Per­ry told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press last week.

The launch brought out VIPs to West Texas in­clud­ing Oprah Win­frey, Kris Jen­ner and oth­er mem­bers of the Kar­dashi­an fam­i­ly, and sev­er­al women who pre­vi­ous­ly have flown on pri­vate flights. Win­frey, a close friend of King, wiped away tears when the cap­sule reached space and the pas­sen­gers were heard mar­veling at the moon and shout­ing with joy.

As the women were buck­ling up af­ter a few min­utes of weight­less­ness, Per­ry sang a few lines of “What a Won­der­ful World,” King said in a post-launch tele­vised in­ter­view.

Be­zos opened the cap­sule’s hatch min­utes af­ter touch­down, em­brac­ing Sanchez, the first one out. As they emerged, Per­ry and King kneeled and kissed the ground. “Oh my God, that was amaz­ing,” said King, who con­sid­ers her­self an anx­ious air­plane fly­er.

This wasn’t the first Blue Ori­gin launch with mar­quee names.

“Star Trek” ac­tor William Shat­ner caught a lift to space with Blue Ori­gin in 2021 at age 90, soon af­ter Be­zos’ in­au­gur­al trip. He was fol­lowed by for­mer New York Gi­ants de­fen­sive end and TV host Michael Stra­han and Lau­ra Shep­ard Church­ley, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mer­cury as­tro­naut Alan Shep­ard, for whom the rock­et is named. Two avi­a­tion pi­o­neers who missed out on space when they were younger — Wal­ly Funk and Ed Dwight — al­so rock­et­ed away at ages 82 and 90, re­spec­tive­ly.

Most of Blue Ori­gin’s pas­sen­gers — 58 count­ing the lat­est launch — have been busi­ness or sci­ence types, TV hosts or YouTu­bers. Tick­et prices are not dis­closed.

The Russ­ian Space Agency al­so has launched its share of space tourists, be­gin­ning with a Cal­i­for­nia fi­nancier in 2001. Two decades lat­er, a Russ­ian ac­tress filmed aboard the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX al­so sells mul­ti-day trips to pri­vate cus­tomers. SpaceX’s first client to fly, bil­lion­aire tech en­tre­pre­neur Jared Isaac­man al­ready has launched twice and per­formed the first pri­vate space­walk. He’s now set to be­come NASA’s next ad­min­is­tra­tor if con­firmed by the Sen­ate.

Chi­nese-born bit­coin in­vestor Chun Wang just re­turned from the first space­flight to car­ry peo­ple over the north and south poles. Wang picked up the whole SpaceX tab for him­self and three po­lar ex­plor­ers for an undis­closed sum.

“In this ex­cit­ing new era of com­mer­cial space­flight, the dream of be­com­ing an as­tro­naut is no longer lim­it­ed to a se­lect few,” Wang said via X last week.

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press Health and Sci­ence De­part­ment re­ceives sup­port from the Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute’s Sci­ence and Ed­u­ca­tion­al Me­dia Group and the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion. The AP is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for all con­tent.

By MAR­CIA DUNN