• Jeff Bezos sold one of his several Washington properties after moving to Miami in 2023.
• He snapped up three mansions on Indian Creek Island, leaving behind eight properties in Washington.
• He closed the reported deal for $63 million on a Hunts Point estate.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has amassed a real estate portfolio that rivals some of America's biggest property owners. He's the 23rd-largest landowner in the US, according to the 2025 Land Report, with at least 420,000 acres to his name.

Bezos' Seattle-area real estate empire, which was worth as much as $190 million in 2023 based on Zillow estimates, is getting smaller. Almost two years after moving south, Bezos sold one of his several Seattle properties for a big profit.

He sold his 9,420-square-foot home in Hunts Point, Washington, for a record $63 million, Puget Sound Business Journal reported in April. The estate was acquired by Cayan Investments LLC, Business Insider confirmed Thursday.

His collection also includes three properties in Indian Creek Village, an island off the coast of Miami, where he announced in 2023 he'd be relocating with his fiancée Lauren Sánchez.

Bezos, worth $211 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, purchased several properties with his former wife MacKenzie Scott. Their divorce was finalized in 2019, and it's unclear which of these properties Bezos still owns, as divorce records were not made public.

From two neighboring Beverly Hills mansions to multiple estates in exclusive Seattle suburbs, here are Bezos' residential properties in the US.

Caroline Cakebread, Katie Warren, Dominic-Madori Davis, and Libertina Brandt contributed to an earlier version of this article.

Jeff Bezos has spent millions of dollars amassing a collection of residential properties over the years.

A 2025 Land Report named Bezos the country's 23rd-largest landowner, with 420,000 acres to his name.

Over the years, he's picked up several New York City apartments, a ranch in Texas, and homes in Washington state, California, and Washington, DC.

 

For years, Bezos' home base was a nearly 24,000-square-foot estate in Medina, Washington.

In 1998, Bezos paid $10 million for a 5.3-acre property in the wealthy suburb on the shores of Lake Washington.

Twelve years later, in 2010, he spent $45 million on an estate nextdoor, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

One home is a 20,600-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom house with a basement spanning over 5,000-square-feet and five fireplaces. The other is an 8,300-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom home built in 1940.

The Wall Street Journal reported that he purchased the property next door in 2010 under Aspen Ventures LLC. That lot has a 24,000-square-foot Tudor-style, six-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion, which was listed for $53 million. 

Finally, in 2015, he purchased a $3.9 million property across the street from the Medina compound, Business Insider previously reported. The comparatively smaller property was purchased through a trust managed by the same law firm, and with the same property tax address, as the other Medina properties Bezos and Scott purchased before their divorce.

Medina is an exclusive suburb that is home to Bill Gates, Microsoft bigwigs, tech entrepreneurs, and telecom magnates.

Many of the neighborhood's mansions are hidden away behind gates and protected by elaborate security systems.

Bezos' first big New York purchases were three apartments, which he bought for $7.65 million on Central Park West in Manhattan.

The three units in The Century building on Manhattan's Upper West Side were purchased in 1999 from the former Sony Music head Tommy Mottola, The Observer reported at the time. 

More than a decade later, in 2012, Bezos bought an additional unit in the building, valued at $5.3 million in 2012, making him the owner of four condos in the building.

The Art Deco building was built in the 1930s, boasts a concierge, elevator attendants, and three separate entrances.

His next big buy was a massive ranch near the town of Van Horn, Texas.

In 2004, Bezos purchased Corn Ranch, a 165,000-acre stretch of land outside Van Horn, Texas.

He told the local paper he bought the property so his family would get the chance to live on a ranch like he did when he visited his grandfather as a child. The land is also the most productive launch site for his aerospace company Blue Origin.

Three years after buying The Washington Post in 2013, Bezos bought a former textile museum in DC's Kalorama.

He spent $23 million on the property, which dates back to 1912 and has a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, The Washington Post reported.

The neighborhood is a hot spot for Washington bigwigs.

The Obamas purchased an $8.1 million property nearby in 2017, which marked the second-most expensive transaction in the neighborhood, after Bezos' — The Washington Post reported.

The two joint structures on Bezos' property have nearly 27,000 square feet of living space, making it the largest home in Washington, DC.

It's been reported that Bezos may have also purchased the home across the street in January 2020 for $5 million, though BI could not confirm he owns the property.

In the months following his 2019 divorce, Bezos spent $45 million on four properties in other exclusive Seattle enclaves.

The largest property of the 2019 spending spree was a $37.5 million waterfront estate in Hunts Point, an exclusive neighborhood with fewer than 400 residents. The home has 300 feet of coastline, a rooftop deck with a fireplace, and a glass bridge connecting to a two-story guesthouse.

He purchased two more modest homes in Hunts Point around the same time, which his neighbors said are used for security and other staff, including a chef.

When he offloaded the $37.5 million estate in April, he got $25 million more than he purchased it for in 2019, Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

Around the same time, he purchased a home nearby in Yarrow Point.

He also purchased a staff home in the nearby Yarrow Point. The home sold for $4.2 million in January 2024, according to its listing on Compass.

Two months after Bezos and MacKenzie Scott finalized their divorce, he reportedly dropped about $80 million on three New York City apartments.

In 2019, he dropped about $80 million on three adjacent New York City apartments in the priciest-ever real-estate deal south of Manhattan's 42nd Street.

The spread included a three-story penthouse and two units directly below it.  It was the priciest real estate deal south of Manhattan's 42nd Street, appraiser Jonathan Miller told The Wall Street Journal at the time.

Renderings of the inside of the apartment from the creative agency VisualHouse show the opulence of the penthouse.

Bezos has since purchased two more units inside the prewar building. In 2020, he spent $16 million on an additional unit, and purchased a $23 million apartment in the building in 2021.

The purchases brought his grand total to $119 million of real estate in the one building, which has a fitness center, golf simulator, game room, and movie-screening room, according to the property's website.

 

Bezos also owns property in Beverly Hills, California, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

He first bought property in the cushy neighborhood in 2007, shelling out $24.45 million for a mansion that had tennis courts, a guesthouse, a six-car garage, and a pool, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. In 2017, he bought the house next door for $12.9 million.

In 2022, Scott donated the two mansions to a housing charity.

 

After his divorce, he broke California records when he purchased the Warner Estate in 2020.

Bezos purchased the nine-acre Warner Estate in Beverly Hills for $165 million from billionaire David Geffen.

The estate was designed for Jack Warner — the former president of Warner Bros. Studios — in the 1930s. 

The most expensive home sale in California's history at the time, Bezos purchased the house for $165 million from David Geffen, who bought it in 1990 for $47.5 million. The mansion has guest homes, a tennis court, a swimming pool, and a nine-hole golf course.

Like many of his other homes, privacy is key at the Warner Estate. Hedges surround the nine acres on which the 13,600-square-foot home sits.

In 2021, Bezos and his now-fiancée Lauren Sánchez bought a home in Hawaii.

Bezos paid about $78 million for the Maui home, according to The New York Times.

In the weeks leading up to the purchase, Bezos made several donations to local organizations — including Hawaii Land Trust and Mālama Family Recovery Center, local news site Maui Now reported.

Sánchez announced that she and Bezos would donate $100 million to help Maui after neighborhoods on the island were devastated by fires.

"Jeff and I are heartbroken by what's happening in Maui. We are thinking of all the families that have lost so much and a community that has been left devastated," Sánchez wrote on Instagram. 

Their notable island neighbors include fellow billionaires Oprah Winfrey, Paul Thiel, and Oracle executive Larry Ellison, according to the Times.

Bezos purchased a home in Indian Creek in 2023, another billionaire hotspot.

In August 2023, he added a $68 million mansion on Miami's "billionaire bunker" island, Indian Creek Village, to his portfolio. 

The home reportedly spans 9,300 square feet, and the entire property is about 2.8 acres. The exclusive island has been home to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Tom Brady, and billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

While announcing his relocation, Bezos said that he wanted to be closer to his parents and space company Blue Origin's operations in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

He reportedly also snapped up the home next door.

Bezos bought the seven-bedroom Indian Creek mansion for $79 million in October, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

The nearly two-acre mansion was built in 2000 and boasts features like a home theater, library, pool, and wine cellar.

But he wasn't done yet with his Indian Creek shopping spree. People representing Bezos reportedly contacted at least three other island homeowners to discuss purchasing their properties, Bloomberg reported in early January.

Bezos snapped up a third mansion on Indian Creek for $90 million

In April 2024, Bezos made his third purchase on the island known as the "billionaire bunker," Bloomberg reported. He paid $90 million for the six-bedroom home in an off-market transaction.

The house last sold for $2.5 million in 1998, according to the outlet, which noted that Bezos plans to live there while tearing down the other two properties he'd purchased on the island.

Indian Creek, located on Biscayne Bay and home to fewer than 100 residents, has its own mayor and police force, and is accessible only via a gated bridge.

• Jeff Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million Amazon shares by May 2026.
• The sale would be worth about $4.75 billion at Thursday's closing price.
• Bezos has done several other major sell-offs recently, including 50 million shares in February 2024.

Over the next year, Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, plans to sell a chunk of his Amazon shares worth billions.

The Amazon executive chair and Blue Origin founder is set to offload up to 25 million shares of his stock in the e-commerce giant over a period ending in May 2026, as part of a trading plan he adopted in March, a Friday regulatory filing said.

The shares were worth about $4.75 billion at their closing price of $189.82 on Thursday.

This is Bezos' latest in a string of major Amazon stock sell-offs over the past year. He stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021.

In July, Bezos filed a plan to sell 25 million shares, worth about $5 billion at the time, after Amazon's stock hit a record high. And in February 2024, Bezos sold off 50 million Amazon shares, worth about $8.5 billion. The billionaire also sold off a few smaller chunks of stock in May 2024, totaling 1.1 million shares at a value of about $117 million.

Even at a combined total of about 100 million shares, the string of sales amounts to just a fraction of Bezos' stock. As of November, he had over 926 million of the company's shares, or just under 9% of Amazon's total stock.

Bezos has previously said he sells off Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin, his space venture.

The disclosure came the day after Amazon's latest earnings call. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the call that he was optimistic the company could keep prices down amid tariff turmoil but that it was still figuring out "where they're going to settle and when they're going to settle."

Bezos did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Amazon declined to comment.

• Katy Perry commented on a fan page's Instagram post to thank her "katycats" for their support.
• Perry alluded to recent backlash, saying "the 'online' world" has treated her like a "human piñata."
• "The internet is very much so a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed," she wrote.

One week after launching her cross-continental Lifetimes Tour, Katy Perry thanked fans for their support — and reflected on the hypercritical response to her recent career moves.

On Tuesday, @katyperrybrasil, a fan page dedicated to the diamond-selling singer, shared footage of a billboard in Times Square that reads in part, "Congratulations on the opening week of the tour. We are so proud of you and your magical journey."

In the Instagram caption, the account's owners explained that Perry fan pages from all over the world had chipped in for 24 hours of prime billboard real estate to honor Perry and "remind her that she is never alone."

Mission accomplished: Perry saw the post and wrote a lengthy comment expressing gratitude for the bond she shares with her fans, aka "katycats."

"Please know I am ok, I have done a lot [of] work around knowing who I am, what is real and what is important to me," she wrote.

"When the 'online' world tries to make me a human piñata, I take it with grace and send them love," Perry continued, "'cause I know so many people are hurting in so many ways and the internet is very much so a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed."

The fan-funded gesture arrives amid a rough patch for Perry's reputation. After reaching unprecedented pop heights in the 2010s — Perry's sophomore album "Teenage Dream" is the first and only by a woman to yield five No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 — Perry's new music has struggled to generate the same enthusiasm. Last year, her would-be comeback hit "Woman's World" was criticized online for shallow lyrics and problematic collaborators, while her newest album, "143," failed to reach the top five of the Billboard 200 chart.

More recently, Perry went to outer space as a member of Blue Origin's first all-female crew. The trip was marketed as a step forward for women in STEM, but a loud group of detractors — from fellow celebrities like Olivia Munn and Emily Ratajkowski to the fast-food chain Wendy's — saw it instead as wasteful "girlboss gibberish."

Perry also cross-promoted her forthcoming tour during her stint in space, which led to more criticism when her elaborate arena show landed in Mexico City last Wednesday. Over the past week, clips of Perry performing have made the rounds online, often paired with harsh commentary.

In her Instagram comment, Perry said she is focused on the actual crowds at her concerts, not online snark.

"What's real is seeing your faces every night, singing in unison, reading your notes, feeling your warmth," she wrote. "I find people to lock eyes and sing with and I know we are healing each other in a small way when I get to do that."

"I'm not perfect, and I actually have omitted that word from my vocabulary," she continued. "I'm on a human journey playing the game of life with an audience of many and sometimes I fall but… I get back up and go on and continue to play the game and somehow through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light."

Welcome to Edition 7.41 of the Rocket Report! NASA and its contractors at Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue building a new mobile launch tower for the Space Launch System Block 1B rocket, a taller, upgraded version of the SLS rocket being used for the agency's initial Artemis lunar missions. Workers stacked another segment of the tower a couple of weeks ago, and the structure is inching closer to its full height of 355 feet (108 meters). But this is just the start. Once the tower is fully assembled, it must be outfitted with miles of cabling, tubing, and piping and then be tested before it can support an SLS launch campaign. Last year, NASA's inspector general projected the tower won't be ready for a launch until the spring of 2029, and its costs could reach $2.7 billion. The good news, if you can call it that, is that there probably won't be an SLS Block 1B rocket that needs to use it in 2029, whether it's due to delays or cancellation.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Fresh details on Astra's strategic pivot. Astra, the once high-flying rocket startup that crashed back to Earth with investors before going private last year, has unveiled new details about its $44 million contract with the Department of Defense, Space News reports. The DOD contract announced last year supports the development of Rocket 4, a two-stage, mobile launch vehicle with ambitions to deliver cargo across the globe in under an hour. While Astra's ill-fated Rocket 3 focused on launching small satellites into low-Earth orbit, Astra wants to make Rocket 4 a military utility vehicle. Rocket 4 will still be able to loft conventional satellites, but Astra's most lucrative contract for the new launch vehicle involves using the rocket for precise point-to-point delivery of up to 1,300 pounds (590 kilograms) of supplies from orbit via specialized reentry vehicles. The military has shown interest in developing a rocket-based rapid global cargo delivery system for several years, and it has a contract with SpaceX to study how the much larger Starship rocket could do a similar job.

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In an era of reusable rockets and near-daily access to space, NASA is still paying more than it did 30 years ago to launch missions into orbit, according to a study soon to be published in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica.

Launch is becoming more routine. Every few days, SpaceX is sending another batch of Starlink Internet satellites to orbit, and other kinds of missions fill up the rest of SpaceX's launch schedule. SpaceX, alone, has ample capacity to launch the handful of science missions NASA puts into space each year. If supply outpaces demand, shouldn't prices go down?

It's not so simple. NASA is one of many customers jockeying for a slot on SpaceX's launch manifest. The US military is launching more missions than ever before, and SpaceX is about to become the Pentagon's top launch provider. SpaceX already launches more missions for NASA than any other rocket company.

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You know, I was simply going to ignore the bizarre Blue Origin stunt flight from earlier this week. But then it flopped beyond my wildest imagination, and so here we all are.

Doubtless you know the contours already: Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sánchez, pop star Katy Perry, and four other women did a big space tourism trip in the name of performative femiladyism, wearing “space suits” cut so as to require a pair of Spanx underneath. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule,” Sánchez said. “We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut,” Perry said.

This promised to be a marketing bonanza for a nation addled by spectacle. What has happened instead has been a shocking amount of backlash. TikToks mocking Katy Perry’s feigned enthusiasm for “astronomy and astrology.” Suggestions the entire trip was faked. Video footage of what appears to be Bezos literally falling on his face in Texas. Did Bezos even really open the capsule door? Proclamations that the flight “showcased the utter defeat of American feminism.” Social media debates about w …

Read the full story at The Verge.

• On Monday, Katy Perry embarked on a space tourism mission with Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin.
• The 10-minute round trip was criticized by some as unnecessary and self-indulgent.
• It's the latest in a series of PR missteps for the singer.

Katy Perry's art has recently been criticized as out of touch, and going all the way to outer space hasn't helped her image.

On Monday, Perry boarded one of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rockets for roughly 10 minutes of commercial space tourism. The six-person crew, which also included CBS News anchor Gayle King and Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez, flew just above the Kármán line, the imaginary border of Earth's atmosphere, before returning safely to Texas.

In the days and hours leading up to the journey, Perry was the subject of a deluge of posts on social media that were alternately silly and furious that a pop star would be going on a promotional mission to space. For every funny post joking about the length of her trip, others lambasted Perry for being part of a mission they deemed wasteful and self-indulgent.

After Perry safely landed back on Earth, the comments continued rolling in.

"Today Katy Perry burned more emissions than Taylor Swift did during the entire Eras Tour. Taylor brought millions of dollars to local economies and the space trip contributed nothing to society…. Just a trip funded by a billionaire…." one user wrote.

"thinking 'we have to protect our mother' about the earth after going on a vanity space flight funded by a billionaire whose company is destroying said planet is just so funny, she's got jokes," another wrote.

The media also got in on the action, writing columns like "So Katy Perry went to space. Wasn't there anyone else we could have sent?" (the Guardian) and articles like "20 musicians who should get to go to space before Katy Perry" (NPR).

It didn't help that Perry had embarked on a media circuit ahead of the mission, ostensibly attempting to explain its value but giving her critics more fodder. Speaking with AP News, Perry recycled buzzwords — like "feminine divine" — that she often used to promote her latest album, "143," and waxed poetic about how the mission would fuel her personal interests.

"I was winding down from a [tour] rehearsal the other day and I was listening to 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan and reading a book on string theory," she said. (In a useful bit of cross-promotion, Perry is also in the middle of her multi-continent Lifetimes tour and literally showed off the tour setlist in space in a video clip.)

"I've always been interested in astrophysics and interested in astronomy and astrology and the stars," Perry continued. "It'll be exciting to see them twinkle from that sight."

It begs the question: Exciting for whom? Perry's quotes about STEM and stars have drawn mockery on social media, while actor Olivia Munn openly criticized the Blue Origin mission as "gluttonous."

Blue Origin doesn't publicly disclose pricing for their private flights, but requesting to reserve a seat via the company's website requires a $150,000 deposit. Forbes reported that each passenger's ticket likely cost millions. The company's slogan is, "For the benefit of Earth," but to detractors, it looks an awful lot like a bunch of rich people taking an ego trip.

Many critics have noted the potential pollutants produced by rocket launches, especially frivolous ones — a reaction Perry could have foreseen, given all the heat celebrities like Taylor Swift and the Kardashians have gotten for flying on private jets.

It's the latest PR misstep for the singer, whose attempted pop comeback fell flat last year. The backlash started with her would-be hit single, "Woman's World," which took a swing at satire but missed the mark by a wide margin, leading to a full-blown "career crisis."

As the most instantly recognizable name in the crew, Perry's involvement with Blue Origin invited a lot of extra attention to its first all-female trip — and, by extension, to space tourism more broadly as a rapidly growing industry for the superrich.

Perry told Elle she has wanted to go to space for her entire adult life. "I was investigating all of the possible commercial options," she said.

During her interviews about the space mission, Perry has thrown in some talking points about inspiring the "next generation" of young girls to follow in her footsteps. Still, it's hard to think of a 10-minute joyride in a privately funded rocket as more than a vanity project — literally fulfilling a pop star's dream to "make space and science glam" and "put the 'ass' in astronaut," in Perry's own words — when the majority of Americans are worried about earthly concerns like affording a carton of eggs, staying employed, and paying off student-loan debt.

If Perry was hoping to remind fans that her once-fun brand, full of relatable teenage dreams and harmless dancing sharks, now seems out-of-touch— well, then, mission accomplished.

• Lauren Sánchez launched to the edge of space on a Blue Origin rocket Monday morning.
• It's the first all-female crew since 1963 when Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
• Sánchez said she was "so proud of this crew" for their bravery.

Jeff Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez made history on Monday, becoming part of the first all-female crew to launch toward space in the 21st century. The last time was in 1963 when cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, and Kerianne Flynn joined Sánchez on the flight.

"It was a feeling of joy and camaraderie. It was a feeling of gratefulness. It was a feeling that we're doing this," Sánchez said shortly after returning to Earth.

The journalist and helicopter pilot rode Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, which takes space tourists to 62 miles above Earth's surface — to the Kármán line, which is the internationally recognized boundary between space and our planet.

The rocket is named after the NASA astronaut Alan Shepard, who conducted a similar, brief suborbital flight to become the first American in space in 1961.

"Alan Shepard did this same exact flight and he became the first American in space, and six women just did the same flight," Sánchez said.

'More connected than you realize'

The six women experienced weightlessness for about three minutes before falling back to Earth. Looking out of the rocket's windows in those few moments of zero-G, Sánchez said she felt connected.

"Earth looked so, it was so quiet," she said adding that, "You look at it and you're like — we're all in this together. That's all I could think about, like, we're so connected, more connected than you realize."

Astronauts have long described similar, overwhelming feelings of awe, unity, and appreciation for Earth's fragility as they gaze down on our planet from space. They call it "the overview effect."

Shepard himself said he cried when he saw Earth from the moon during an Apollo mission in 1971. The Star Trek actor William Shatner also cried when he returned from a suborbital Blue Origin flight in 2021, saying: "It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death."

Sánchez said she was proud of her fellow crew members' bravery while venturing into the unknown.

"Gayle — you know we were just talking in the capsule — doesn't even have ear piercings, she's so afraid to do anything. And she got in that capsule, and I think it profoundly changed her," Sánchez said.

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has been launching tourists to space since the billionaire himself flew on New Shepard's maiden passenger flight in 2021.

Bezos founded Blue Origin with the idea to help move heavy, polluting industries off our planet and into space, and has said the company could lay the groundwork for one trillion people to live and work in space someday.

This goal is still a long way off but Blue Origin is making progress.

Although New Shepard can only skim the edge of space, in January the company flew its orbital mega-rocket New Glenn for the first time. New Glenn is designed to lift heavy payloads to space and the moon.

• Katy Perry joined Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket.
• She sang the Louis Armstrong song "What a Wonderful World" while on board.
• Perry emphasized the flight's focus on collective energy and future women in space.

Katy Perry spent the morning as an astronaut. But while she sailed through space on a 10-minute flight, she reminded the all-female crew that she's a singer, too.

On Monday, Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez were among the star-studded crew members who took a flight to space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket. During the flight, a faint sound of someone singing was audible on the live stream.

After the 10-minute flight, King revealed that Perry was singing "What a Wonderful World." Perry explained why she chose to sing the Louis Armstrong classic.

"I've covered that song in the past," she said. "Obviously my higher self is steering the ship. I had no clue I'd one day decide to sing a little bit of that in space."

King said that she and other crew members, which along with Sánchez included bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn, wanted Perry to sing one of her hits like "Roar" or "Firework," but Perry declined, saying the moment was "not about me."

"It's not about singing my songs," she said. "It's about a collective energy and making space for future women. It's about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth."

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has launched pop singer / songwriter Katy Perry into space, along with five other women: former NASA scientists Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen, journalist Gayle King, journalist and Bezos fiancée Lauren Sánchez, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Their flight, called NS-31, launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket as its launch window opened at  8:30AM CT / 9:30AM ET. It was livestreamed both on YouTube and Blue Origin’s website.

Past New Shepard flights have taken passengers just to the edge of space, where they’re allowed to unbuckle and roam freely for a few minutes inside the capsule before buckling up again for re-entry. The capsule then deploys a parachute and touches back down in west Texas. Seven minutes after today’s launch, the New Shepard rocket itself touched back down on its landing pad, while the capsule carrying Blue Origin’s passengers touched down more than three minutes after that.

In a video posted to Instagram before the flight, Perry said she plans to make a “special reveal coming to you from zero gravity.” She posted an earlier video touring the capsule that she and the others will be aboard, and said she will probably sing in space. Whatever that reveal was, it wasn’t audible on the livestream, which cut out a few times while we were watching.

This is Blue Origin’s 31st New Shepard launch. The rocket’s last flight was in February, and previous tourists aboard New Shepard flights include William Shatner, and 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who was America’s first astronaut candidate, but who never made it to space. 

• Lauren Sánchez's all-female space crew took flight Monday on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket.
• Katy Perry promised to sing on the trip and did so, but it was difficult to hear.
• Here's what to know about the flight and crew of the New Shepard 31.

Lauren Sánchez, Katy Perry, and a crew of inspirational women took a trip to space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket on Monday.

The women were on Blue Origin's NS-31, the 31st flight of the New Shepard rocket program, which launched from its base in Texas.

Here's what to know about the flight and the crew.

Blue Origin's NS-31 rocket launched at 8:30 a.m. CT.

The rocket traveled to space at up to three times the speed of sound.

About 2 minutes and 40 seconds after launch, the crew capsule separated from the rocket, allowing it to cruise 62 miles above Earth over the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary separating Earth's atmosphere from space.

Once they were past this line, the crew unbuckled to experience a few minutes of weightlessness before the capsule fell back to Earth.

The capsule landed using parachutes roughly 11 minutes after takeoff.

Lauren Sánchez handpicked the NS-31 crew

The NS-31 crew featured: Sánchez, an Emmy-winning journalist and finance of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; pop star Perry; Gayle King, the award-winning CBS News anchor; Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist; Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist; and Kerianne Flynn, a film producer.

Not only was Nguyen the first Vietnamese woman in space, but this was the first all-female space crew since 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian engineer, crewed a solo flight.

Sánchez told Elle magazine she chose the other crew members because they're all "storytellers in their own right. They're going to go up to space and be able to spread what they felt in different ways."

Sánchez asked Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, the creative directors of luxury brand Oscar de la Renta and co-founders of their own brand Monse, to make fashionable spacesuits for the crew, she told The New York Times.

The NS-31 crew is certified ‘ready to fly to space’ by CrewMember 7 Sarah Knights. The launch window opens tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. CDT / 13:30 UTC.

You can watch the live webcast here tomorrow at 7 a.m. CDT, hosted by Charissa Thompson, Kristin Fisher, and Ariane Cornell. pic.twitter.com/auKPJvtSl3

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 14, 2025

Garcia and Kim partnered with Creative Character Engineering, a Hollywood costume company, to create the Monse Blue Origin suits.

On Sunday, Perry posted an Instagram video showing the capsule, explaining that they dubbed their crew "The Taking Up Space Crew" and promising to sing during the flight.

During the flight, she sang as she'd previously promised, but the audio was difficult to hear.

King said on the Blue Origin livestream that Perry sang "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong.

"It's not about me. It's not about singing my songs," Perry said of her song choice. "It's about a collective energy and making space for future women. It's about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth."

Meanwhile, Nguyen said on Instagram she would conduct multiple experiments on women's health and plants during the brief flight.

Blue Origin flight deposits are $150,000

Blue Origin, founded by Bezos, has been offering space tourism flights since 2021.

The company does not disclose the cost of a space flight, but the website says applicants must pay a $150,000 refundable deposit.

In 2021, Blue Origin auctioned a seat for its maiden flight for $28 million. Tim Chrisman, the cofounder of the Foundation for the Future, told the Observer in 2022 that a board member of the nonprofit paid $1 million for his seat.

Blue Origin has also attracted several celebrities, including William Shatner, the "Star Trek" star.

• Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has been competing with SpaceX.
• Blue Origin has two rockets and is developing a moon lander and multifunctional spacecraft.
• Here's the rocket company's history, mission, customers, and biggest rocket launches.

Blue Origin's rockets are making a name for themselves in the private space race.

Jeff Bezos founded the aerospace company in 2000 with the idea of moving heavy, polluting industries off our planet and into space, where millions of people would live and work. The company's name, Blue Origin, refers to Earth.

Bezos called Blue Origin his "most important work," in a 2018 interview with Axel Springer.

Blue Origin's mission is to "build a road to space" by developing reliable, cost-effective rockets.

Blue Origin is vying for space industry dominance as spaceflight companies aim for the moon and Mars. The company's New Shepard rockets regularly fly tourists on short flights to the edge of space. Its New Glenn rocket is designed to carry heavy missions into orbit or to the moon. Blue Origin engineers are also developing a moon lander, called Blue Moon, for future NASA use.

Blue Origin's ambitions have been a source of rivalry between Bezos and Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX remains the world's leading rocket-launch provider.

History and founding

Bezos has said he founded Blue Origin with the vision of giant space stations hosting entire mega-cities of people, based on concepts proposed by the physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in 1976.

Bezos told Lex Fridman in 2023 that he wants to support one trillion humans living throughout the solar system. He added that would result in 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins at any given time.

"We could easily support a civilization that large with all the resources in the solar system," he added.

Still, Bezos says in a video on Blue Origin's website that "Earth is the best planet."

Blue Origin did not initially seem to improve Jeff Bezos' net worth, though. Bezos later revealed, in 2017, that he was selling Amazon stock to finance the rocket company.

The company kept a very low profile for its first two decades. Blue Origin's first rocket launch was in 2015. That was an uncrewed test flight of the suborbital New Shepard rocket.

Bezos himself flew on New Shepard's first passenger flight in July 2021, making history as the first billionaire to reach the Kármán line, which is a somewhat arbitrary but internationally recognized boundary at 100 kilometers (62 miles) altitude. It's sometimes referred to as the beginning of outer space.

Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO that same year, saying he wanted to focus on Blue Origin.

In May 2023, Blue Origin won a NASA contract to land astronauts on the moon, after suing the agency for awarding its first moon-landing contract to only SpaceX. The company lost the lawsuit.

Blue Origin's super-sized orbital rocket, New Glenn, launched for the first time in January 2025.

In April 2025, the company clinched its first Pentagon launch contracts.

Blue Origin's CEO is Dave Limp. The company is headquartered in Kent, Washington, and has rocket launch facilities in West Texas. It has also used a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Blue Origin rockets

Blue Origin has one suborbital rocket and one orbital rocket. It's also developing a moon lander and a moon-orbiting spacecraft.

New Glenn

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is designed to launch missions into Earth's orbit and to the moon, with a reusable booster to reduce launch costs.

New Glenn is named after the first American to reach orbit, John Glenn. Seven BE-4 engines on the booster give it enough power to carry up to 45 metric tons into space.

New Glenn belongs to a new generation of the largest, most powerful rockets ever built, next to SpaceX's Starship and NASA's new moon rocket, the Space Launch System.

Blue Origin had begun developing an orbital launch system by 2013, and New Glenn finally made its inaugural flight in January 2025.

New Glenn's first launch was a major leap forward for Blue Origin. It was the first time a rocket company successfully reached orbit on its first-ever attempt.

Here's how the rocket's launch works: As New Glenn screams through the skies, the booster does most of the heavy lifting. Once its fuel is spent and the rocket is on a strong trajectory toward space, the booster separates from the rocket's second stage, which continues onward using BE-3U engines.

Blue Origin aims to land the booster on a platform in the ocean, but on New Glenn's first flight, the booster was lost as it fell back to Earth. Eventually, the company wants to reuse boosters up to 25 times.

According to Blue Origin, the company is already working with customers for New Glenn missions, including AST SpaceMobile, telecommunications companies, and the US Space Force.

New Shepard

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket is designed for suborbital flights which skim the edge of space. It has been flying tourist crews of up to six passengers since 2021.

Bezos himself flew on New Shepard's first flight, then took the Star Trek actor William Shatner on the rocket's second flight later that year.

Upon landing, Shatner said seeing the blackness of space was like looking at death, and added, "I hope I never recover from this."

Blue Origin plans to fly its first all-female passenger crew aboard New Shepard on April 14, including Gayle King, Katy Perry, and Bezos's fiancée, Lauren Sánchez.

Flights on New Shepard last about 11 minutes. Passengers get about three minutes of microgravity, where they can unbuckle from their seats, drift around the spaceship's cabin, and peer out the windows at Earth, before strapping back in for the plummet home.

Because it doesn't need to push itself all the way into orbit, New Shepard is a tiny rocket at just 61 feet tall. BE-3PM engines launch the rocket, then re-fire to softly land it back on the ground. New Shepard is completely reusable.

New Shepard's development involved nine years of testing, which included 16 test flights and three tests of the capsule's emergency escape system.

The vehicle is named after astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the first American to travel to space. Unlike Glenn's orbital flight, Shepard's flight was suborbital.

Blue Moon

Blue Origin is developing the Blue Moon vehicle to land missions on the surface of the moon, launched by the New Glenn rocket.

The company is developing variations of the spacecraft for cargo — up to three metric tons of it — and human crews.

Blue Origin is building BE-7 engines for the lander. The engines are designed to operate in the vacuum of space with enough power to land heavy missions on the moon.

Blue Origin is developing the lander under a $3.4 billion NASA contract.

The contract calls for Blue Origin to conduct an uncrewed test mission to the lunar surface before carrying two astronauts there in 2029.

For NASA astronaut missions, Blue Moon must be able to dock to the Lunar Gateway space station the agency is planning to build in lunar orbit.

Blue Ring

In 2023 Blue Origin announced it was working on a highly maneuverable spacecraft called Blue Ring.

The company plans to sell Blue Ring missions to other companies, which can put more than 3,000 kilograms (about 6,600 pounds) of hardware on board.

Blue Origin says the vehicle can enter a variety of orbits between Earth and the moon.

"Blue Ring addresses two of the most difficult challenges in spaceflight today: growing space infrastructure and increasing mobility on-orbit," Paul Ebertz, the senior vice president of Blue Origin's in-space systems, said in a statement.

The first New Glenn launch carried a prototype of Blue Ring.

Blue Origin vs. SpaceX

Blue Origin and SpaceX have competed for NASA contracts and clout. SpaceX frequently wins the competition.

SpaceX was founded two years later than Blue Origin, but it was launching rockets to orbit by 2008. Its highly influential orbital Falcon 9 rocket first began flying in 2010. Blue Origin didn't launch its first orbital rocket until 2025.

Some of Bezos' space projects mirror Musk's.

For example, like SpaceX's Starship, Blue Origin's New Glenn is designed to be a reusable super-heavy-lift mega-rocket.

While SpaceX launches thousands of Starlink internet satellites into orbit, Bezos's counterpart — Amazon's Kuiper satellites — have been building to their first launch.

At the New York Times DealBook Summit in December 2024, Bezos said that Blue Origin "is not a very good business, yet."

Still, he added, "It's going to be the best business that I've ever been involved in."

Welcome to Edition 7.39 of the Rocket Report! Not getting your launch fix? Buckle up. We're on the cusp of a boom in rocket launches as three new megaconstellations have either just begun or will soon begin deploying thousands of satellites to enable broadband connectivity from space. If the megaconstellations come to fruition, this will require more than a thousand launches in the next few years, on top of SpaceX's blistering Starlink launch cadence. We discuss the topic of megaconstellations in this week's Rocket Report.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

So, what is SpinLaunch doing now? Ars Technica has mentioned SpinLaunch, the company that literally wants to yeet satellites into space, in previous Rocket Report newsletters. This company enjoyed some success in raising money for its so-crazy-it-just-might-work idea of catapulting rockets and satellites into the sky, a concept SpinLaunch calls "kinetic launch." But SpinLaunch is now making a hard pivot to small satellites, a move that, on its face, seems puzzling after going all-in on kinetic launch and even performing several impressive hardware tests, throwing a projectile to altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. Ars got the scoop, with the company's CEO detailing why and how it plans to build a low-Earth orbit telecommunications constellation with 280 satellites.

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The US Space Force announced Friday it selected SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin for $13.7 billion in contracts to deliver the Pentagon's most critical military satellites to orbit into the early 2030s.

These missions will launch the government's heaviest national security satellites, like the National Reconnaissance Office's large, bus-sized spy platforms, and deploy them into bespoke orbits. These types of launches often demand heavy-lift rockets with long-duration upper stages that can cruise through space for six or more hours.

The contracts awarded Friday are part of the next phase of the military's space launch program once dominated by United Launch Alliance, the 50-50 joint venture between legacy defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

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The commercial space industry is booming, and it’s only expected to keep growing as more billionaire-led companies send rockets into the sky. Elon Musk’s SpaceX continues to dominate the space industry with dozens of launches each year, but it could soon have some serious competition with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launching its rival New Glenn rocket for the first time in January.

Plenty more launches are to come, including another test of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket, which exploded while in flight in March. Blue Origin is also set to send Katy Perry into space aboard its New Shepard as part of an all-woman mission on April 14th.

Then there’s Boeing, which NASA isn’t giving up on even after issues with Starliner resulted in astronauts having to extend their week-long stay at the Space Station to nine months. NASA and Boeing are aiming for another crewed flight later this year or in early 2026. The European Space Agency’s Ariane 6 rocket is also in the mix, which embarked on its first commercial mission in March.

Follow along below for all the latest updates on rocket launches.

• This attempt at a first orbital launch from Europe lasted about 30 seconds.
• NASA and Boeing investigate Starliner’s ‘anomalies’ before its next crewed flight
• Katy Perry blasts off to space next month.
• SpaceX Crew-9 and the Boeing Starliner astronauts have landed safely.
• The Starliner astronauts are on their way back to Earth.
• SpaceX’s latest Starship explosion lights up the sky over the Caribbean again
• SpaceX’s 8th Starship flight test ends in another explosion.
• Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket takes off on its first commercial mission.
• SpaceX’s next Starship test flight has been delayed again.
• Jeff Bezos is sending Katy Perry to space
• SpaceX thinks it knows why Starship exploded on its last test flight
• SpaceX’s fiery Starship explosion put on a fantastic show but delayed and diverted flights
• That’s not a meteor shower, that was a Starship.
• SpaceX catches Starship booster for a second time but loses the spacecraft
• Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launches SpaceX rival
• Blue Origin prepares for a high-stakes New Glenn launch
• Two private landers head to the moon to aid future NASA astronauts
• Returning SpaceX rockets are disrupting airline flights.
• Blue Origin sets a new window for New Glenn launch.
• New Glenn: Blue Origin’s big rocket launch is… scrubbed
• Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch is delayed again.
• Blue Ghost Lunar Lander scheduled to launch on January 15th

• Technologist Lane Bess reflects on his two Blue Origin space trips.
• Bess said each trip renewed his sense of what matters in life.
• He called for more visionary investments in space technology and exploration.

This is an as-told-to conversation with tech industry veteran Lane Bess. He founded Bess Ventures and is CEO of Deep Instinct, a deep learning-powered cybersecurity company. He is also the chairman of Blaize AI, the former CEO of Palo Alto Networks, and the former COO of Zscaler. He does not have financial ties to Blue Origin.

I've been to space twice in about three years. Each time, I've returned with a renewed sense of what matters in life.

I took my first trip in December 2021 and my second this past February. Each flight was just 10 minutes long, but Earth looks completely different when you take off and when you land.

I came back this time with several questions about the state of our world. Since my first trip, war has escalated. I thought this then — and still do now — the only limitation to what humanity can achieve is our ability to get along with one another.

What I see instead is a thirst for power, a change in how people see politics, and people compromising the founding ideas of our constitutional forefathers for things that just advantage one country over another.

US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shouldn't be the only three people on Earth who have a say in how the rest of humanity lives their lives.

All of this might make you think we should find another place to go because we're going to mess this up. We won't colonize Mars anytime soon, but maybe it has to start now.

A lifetime curiosity

I've been fascinated by rockets since I was a child. Even before I was a teenager, I remember going to the local hobby store — where I'd have to lie about my age — to buy these model rocket engines (which were obviously flammable). It's a passion I grew to share with my son, Cameron, who also accompanied me on my first space trip.

Years later, it became possible for civilians to go to space. Fortunately, by then, I had made great exits from my previous cybersecurity companies, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler, so I could afford to bid on a Blue Origin seat in an auction. I had also been looking into investing in space technology through my family office, Bess Ventures.

In 2021, right before Thanksgiving, Blue Origin's operations and civilian sales director contacted me about joining its third flight. I was contacted again in January of this year when a seat opened on the 10th flight.

I can't disclose exactly how much my latest trip cost, but it was in the millions. It's clear my five fellow passengers also had good financial outcomes in life. Richard Scott is a reproductive endocrinologist who sold his reproductive medicine group, IVIRMA, to private equity firm KKR. Elaine Chia Hyde, a physicist, pilot, and founder of the media company Chicago Star and the only woman on the trip, had been saving for years to do something like this.

We spent about two and a half days in classroom training before takeoff. Unlike astronauts who prepare for longer orbital trips, we spent no time training in a centrifuge or swimming in a tank to understand weightlessness. This was more about learning the engineering behind the rocket so you know how safe it is. Up until two and a half minutes before they pull the gangplank, though, you can bail out.

Before takeoff we get into the designated crew capsule of the rocket. For the first five to seven seconds, you don't feel much movement because the engine is igniting. You have earpieces to soften the sound of the engine, but you still hear a lot of banging. Then, the capsule is ejected into the air.

In two and a half minutes, you're crossing the Kármán line, and you start to realize how thin and fragile the Earth's atmosphere is. By then, you're also weightless. I used my GoPro to get a shot of the view.

The ascent is smooth, but the descent can get bumpy. You're pulled into your seat with such a high gravitational acceleration that you can't physically move — let alone take a deep breath.

Once we landed, our families were there to welcome us. We had a Champagne toast and took in the fact that we were one of a few hundred civilians that had ventured into space.

Billionaires for space travel

I first interacted with Jeff Bezos' company Amazon back in the nineties when I was a product manager launching AT&T's internet business and Amazon was launching book sales online.

 I wouldn't say we're close friends, but I know him well enough to say he's sincere in his commitment to space and science. At his ranch, he once told me he feels blessed that his businesses have generated enough wealth that he can really think about things that most people just won't think about.

There are thousands of billionaires in the world, but only a dozen or so who put their money into really forward looking things. I guess every generation needs a few of those.

In October 2019, Amazon sued the Pentagon, alleging that President Donald Trump had blocked the company from securing a $10 billion cloud-computing contract because of his animus toward The Washington Post and its owner Jeff Bezos—whom the US president derided as “Jeff Bozo.”

At the time, the dispute was just one example of the near-constant skirmishes between Trump’s White House and corporate America. But the episode left an enduring mark on Bezos, the Amazon founder and the world’s second-richest person.

Over the past year, Bezos has executed a sharp public reversal in his relationship with Trump—whom he previously criticised as a “threat to democracy”—that has surprised even longtime associates and has stunned the Post’s newsroom.

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