Blue Origin’s all-female spaceflight
Blue Origin’s NS-31 – the name denotes the suborbital class rocket New Shepard’s 31st mission – took off from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas today, April 14, at 9:30 am EDT (1330 GMT; 8:30 am local Texas time).
NS-31 was the first all-female spaceflight since June 16, 1963, when the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova orbited Earth for three days. During that historic mission, cosmonaut Tereshkova flew alone aboard a Vostok 6 rocket, becoming the first woman to reach space.
Unlike that mission, New Shepard’s suborbital flights don’t fly to orbit. Instead, they fly over the Kármán Line 100 km [62 miles] above Earth’s surface. The entire mission lasted roughly 10 minutes, with the crew experiencing microgravity for a few minutes.