Video reveals the gross thing Katy Perry did in space

Even zero gravity couldn’t stop the California Gurls singer doing one wild thing while in space, and the odd act has turned many heads.

20,359 days. That’s how long it’s taken us to go from the humanity-lifting, awe-inspiring wonder of Neil Armstrong’s “It’s one small step for man” to what was, I suppose, inevitable.

Space has been invaded, the final frontier has been breached, by a new species – celebrity sponcon has arrived in orbit thanks to Jeff Bezos.

Eleven minutes after taking off, the New Shepherd NS-31 rocket ship, lead by Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos’ fiance, and carrying Katy Perry, breakfast TV host Gayle King and a couple of actual scientists who handily fitted into extremely snug designer flight suits, they were back on terra firma doing their euphoric pieces to camera.

And about 12 minutes after taking off, it became clear: Houston, we have problems. Like, a few of them.

Even before the engines started firing, this mission had the word ‘historic’ mandatorily stapled to the front of it and enjoyed more buzz and build up than NASA and their regular collecting of dusty moon rocks could ever hope for – probably because it had never occurred to them to send someone who’d done a Vegas residency into zero gravity or to make their astronauts pillage Sephora prior to lift off.

But it’s what actually happened up in the thermosphere that is worth talking about – not only did we learn that the very best in bouncy blow dries and the highest end hair pieces really do hold in zero gravity but more importantly, that selling an 84 show tour or shoring up sliding tele ratings now requires being hurtled past the Kármán line, the official point space begins, and hustle baby hustling.

Katy Perry in space.

Once the SIX WOMEN got back down to Earth, specifically West Texas, to rhapsodise about their life-altering perspective and new-found appreciation for a nice solid bit of ground, the truth became clear. Their trip was not really an out breaking thrilling new ground for womenfolk but about selling, selling, selling. Everyone on board had something to move, advertise or plug.

Naked commerce, meet the cosmos.

There was Sanchez doing her bit to help sell her soon-to-be husband Bezos’ ego-inflating side hustle, his commercial space travel business Blue Origin, which will provide private rocket trips for the ultra wealthy looking for kicks and who are bored taking their own sushi grand master to Burning Man.

Lauren Sanchez and Kerianne Flynn in front, and standing in back from left: Amanda Nguyen, Katy Perry, Gayle King and Aisha Bowe. Picture: Blue Origin via AP

Next, CBS’ Mornings’ King who endured the trip looking positively petrified and like she regretted not having gobbled up beta blockers by the handful back at mission control.

Serious props though to how far she was willing to go – 106 km above the Earth’s surface in fact – to try and rustle up publicity for her show which has been, per AdWeek, dropping in the ratings and is now stuck in third place in the breakfast TV market.

To really ensure the maximum coverage, King’s famed bestie Oprah Winfrey (and a couple of mid range Kardashian-Jenners) were on hand too.

Then there was Perry, in one of the strangest starry crossovers since Kim Kardashian decided to take up legal justice reform in her Instagramming off hours, the I Kissed A Girl singer adding ‘astronaut’ to her resume, a plot twist even psychics didn’t see coming. (Next up, Paris Hilton takes up studying the scriptures of ancient Sumeria?)

A few hours after rediscovering the wonders of gravity, Perry posted a video to Instagram revealing that she had partially used her three minutes of weightlessness to flash up a daisy-shaped note to the camera featuring the nearly illegible set list of her forthcoming Lifetimes tour to the camera.

Perry is hoping to boost her career.

Her career of late has been less Firework-y and far more damp sparkler. Of the singles from her 2024 album 143, Woman’s World debuted at number 63 on the US Billboard Hot 100, while Lifetimes and I’m His, He’s Mine, both failed to make the list at all. Lifetimes, according to reports, sold fewer than 1400 copies in its first week.

What better way to try and claw back some relevancy and glowing media coverage than risking life and limb crammed into a billionaire’s phallic folly, all of it dressed up as a great leap forward for feminism?

The New Shepard capsule landed on April 14, 2025, in Van Horn, West Texas. Picture: NewsWire Handout via Blue Origin

I’m not sure whether to be impressed or depressed – someone being given a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, an experience that only a few lucky souls will ever get – and then using it for promo.

After the mission, after all the literal and metaphoric dust had settled, the only meaningful first was obvious – marketing had officially rocketed past the mesosphere!

Perry kisses the ground upon return to Earth. Picture: NewsWire Handout via Blue Origin

We now live in an age of chronic cultural attention deficit and in a certain perpetual state of overwhelm. The news cycle and the informational churn are such that this is where we are now – celebrities are willing to venture to the very edge of the great nothingness of space, to go to such extremes, such stunty lengths, to help them get us to notice them.

It nearly seems sepia-tinted to remember that Lady Gaga once managed to shock the world and make global TV headlines by just turning up to 2010 MTV Music Awards wearing several hundred dollars of fillet steak and a few handily placed T-bones or that Kim Kardashian’s physics-defying bottom once made the internet buckle and break.

Lady Gaga wears her controversial meat dress, as she arrives in the Press Room after winning eight 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Picture: Mark Ralston/AFP

Today, it’s a different world. We all know that Spotify has all but killed the music industry

and the only way a plucky chanteuse could earn a fresh few mill is to go out on tour and to

fill stadiums from Belfast to Buenos Aires.

Then there’s the state of the TV biz. Pity King and those hardy souls left in the broadcast business. This week it was revealed that streaming in the US reached an all-time high in March, dwarfing that of broadcast and cable TV.

And Bezos’ Blue Origin? What else was he going to do to rustle up some buzz around the world’s most useless and out of reach new industry?

In 2025, bolstering ratings, or selling out Sao Paulo arenas, or advertising the latest way that squillionaires can get their jollies requires the willingness to be propelled at 37000 kilometres per hour and up to about 30 times higher than commercial aircraft fly. Cripes.

Where do dedication and daring end and desperation begin?

Later in the video Perry shared to Insta, a voice can be heard imploring her fellow astronauts to look at the moon. The glimpse that can be seen showed the nearly unimaginable view, the breathtaking, heart shaking perspective. How long until someone is pitching the first Coke collab for the lunar surface do you reckon?

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Video reveals the gross thing Katy Perry did in space