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Entrepreneur and former NASA engineer Aisha Bowe celebrates after exiting the Blue Origin New Shepard capsule following a suborbital spaceflight with five other women on April 14, 2025.
On April 14, 2025, Blue Origin achieved a milestone with its 11th human spaceflight mission, marking the company’s first all-female crew. Among the six individuals aboard, based on the company’s seat allocation, one of the newly designated astronauts became the 100th person in history to undertake a purely suborbital trajectory to space and subsequently return.
Understanding the Image
This photograph encapsulates the instant former NASA aerospace engineer, now entrepreneur, Aisha Bowe emerged from Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule. She had just completed a brief, 10-minute suborbital journey to space. The image depicts her arms outstretched in jubilation.
Accompanied by five other women, including notable figures like musician Katy Perry and television personality Gayle King, Bowe ascended beyond the Karman Line. This altitude, situated at 62 miles (100 kilometers), is globally acknowledged as the defined boundary separating Earth’s atmosphere from the expanse of space.
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Location of the Event
Following their suborbital flight, Bowe and her fellow crew members touched down in West Texas. Their landing site was in proximity to their launch point, Blue Origin’s Launch Site One, situated near Van Horn, Texas.
The rocket booster responsible for propelling the New Shepard crew capsule into space also made a successful return to the same launch site. It reactivated its engine and executed a controlled landing on deployable legs, enabling its future re-use for subsequent missions.
Significance of the Flight
Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch system is named in honor of Alan Shepard, a pioneering figure as the first American in space and the first individual to accomplish a suborbital spaceflight. His Mercury-Redstone 3 mission, launched on May 5, 1961, aboard the Freedom 7 capsule, concluded with a splashdown in the Bahamas – the ancestral homeland of Bowe’s family.
While Shepard later walked on the moon during Apollo 14 and is not included in the 100-person suborbital count, Bowe’s cohort includes pilots from the X-15 and SpaceShipOne rocket planes. It also encompasses individuals who previously participated in space tourism and suborbital science missions with Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.
Learn More
For further details, explore coverage of Bowe’s NS-31 mission and the personal items she and her fellow astronauts selected to carry as mementos of their space journey. Additionally, you can access reports and videos capturing the crew’s immediate reactions upon their return to Earth.