Jeff Bezos could barely contain his excitement after his fiancée touched down following her trip into space – falling down to earth with a faceplant.
The Amazon billionaire was seen running to greet Lauren Sánchez after her return from a historic Blue Origin mission on Monday. Moments after the New Shepard capsule touched down in the West Texas desert, completing its 11-minute suborbital flight, the Blue Origin founder was seen running toward the landing site.
But in his excitement, Bezos tripped over a mound of sand and faceplanted in front of the capsule, briefly disappearing from view as the crew laughed in the background. “Come on out, guys,” he shouted as he popped back up, brushing off the dust and waiting eagerly for the hatch to open.
When Sánchez emerged, the beaming billionaire embraced her with a hug and a kiss, clearly unfazed by his tumble.
The mission marked a significant milestone for Bezos’s Blue Origin, carrying the first all-female crew to space since the Soviet Union sent cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into orbit in 1963. Sánchez was joined by a high-profile team, including pop superstar Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, aerospace engineer and former NASA intern Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyễn, and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.
Dubbed “NS-31,” the mission was launched from the company’s private launch site near Van Horn, Texas, reaching an altitude of over 62 miles, the internationally recognised boundary of space. After a few minutes of weightlessness, the crew capsule safely parachuted back to Earth.
Bezos, 61, stood proudly near the capsule in his signature cowboy hat, applauding as the crew disembarked. “It was the most incredible experience,” Sánchez said after the landing, still wearing her flight suit. “To see the curvature of the Earth, to float, to look out and think, ‘We’re all in this together’ — it changes your perspective.”
Each woman aboard had a unique reason for joining the mission.
Bowe, a former Lockheed Martin engineer, said she wanted to inspire more young women of colour to pursue STEM careers.
Nguyễn, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and rape survivor who helped draft the US Survivors’ Bill of Rights, said she was representing survivors everywhere.
Flynn, who directed a documentary on women in science, said she hoped to continue telling stories of those “who dare to push boundaries.”
Perry, known more for her chart-topping hits than her rocket science, said the flight was “truly humbling”.
The mission also highlighted Blue Origin’s return to form after a 2022 booster failure that temporarily grounded the New Shepard program.
Monday’s successful launch and landing reaffirmed the company’s ambitions in the space tourism race as it continues to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
Bezos, who made his own spaceflight aboard New Shepard in 2021, founded Blue Origin in 2000.
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