In high school, Aisha Bowe’s guidance counselor told her she wasn’t suited for a career in aerospace engineering, and that she should try cosmetology instead. On Monday (April 14), Bowe proved that naysayer wrong in a big way, becoming the first Bahamian woman to fly to space.
Bowe was part of Blue Origin’s 11th crewed mission, which carried six women on the first all-female spaceflight since the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space over 60 years ago. Inside Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule, Aisha Bowe strapped in alongside her five crewmates for a quick, 10.5-minute suborbital ride to space and back.
New Shepard’s rocket lifted off with the sextet on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. The brief flight allowed its passengers a few minutes of weightlessness and took them above the Kármán Line — the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) boundary of space — before parachuting back to Earth for a soft desert touchdown. Bowe’s first thought after landing: “I’m ready to go back.”
Today, I had an opportunity to be on a flight that mimicked [Alan Shepard’s] trajectory and allowed me to carry the legacy of my grandfather, who came from Exuma, Bahama, which was my call sign on this trip. And I carried the flag of the Bahamas as a powerful reminder of the past, the present and the future of space.
Aisha Bowe
Bowe pursued her dream to go to space by earning degrees in aerospace and space systems engineering. She is a former NASA rocket scientist and is currently CEO of STEMBoard. Bowe also founded the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education technology company LINGO and is a standing member of the National Society of Black Engineers and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Related: Katy Perry and Gayle King launch to space with 4 others on historic all-female Blue Origin rocket flight
Bowe launched with pop star Katy Perry, journalists Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez, author and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
Though their flight to space was short, Bowe found a deep connection to the launch through her own roots. In a post-launch press conference on Monday, Bowe drew parallels between the suborbital trajectory of her Blue Origin mission to that of the first American in space, Alan Shepard, for whom Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle is named.
“I will never be the same.”
“In 1961, when Alan Shepard was launched, we know where he left from, but do you know where he landed? He landed in Grand Bahama,” Bowe said. Her family is from the Bahamas, and Bowe’s 92-year-old grandfather traveled to Texas to watch her launch to space.
Bowe wasn’t the only private astronaut representing a nation’s milestone in space. Nguyễn became the first Vietnamese woman to fly to space. The mission also carried the 100th person to fly on a private, suborbital spaceflight mission — an honor bestowed upon Bowe, thanks to her New Shepard seat assignment, Seat 04.