Drone Footage Shows Blue Origin Rocket Landing in the Desert After Dropping Off Katy Perry

Amazing drone footage captured the moment a reusable rocket used for the celebrity-packed Blue Origin suborbital mission landed perfectly on a touchdown pad.

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, recently blasted a crew of very famous space tourists – including Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sanchez – on a 10-minute flight that reached nearly 66 miles above Earth’s surface, crossing the Kármán line.

Blue Origin’s big-windowed crew capsule parachuted down to the West Texas desert on April 14 with the celebrities still in-tact. The separated reusable rocket booster’s engine refired to slow to some six mph for a soft touchdown on the pad.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp shared the video of the landing on social media. The footage shows the booster falling back through the atmosphere, the engine roaring as it corrects course just above the ground.

“That never gets old! A new perspective of the booster landing,” Limp posts on X.

About 10 seconds into the video, the booster can be seen stirring up dust as it shifts laterally, easing itself to the center of the landing pad. The pad is marked with Blue Origin’s feather logo — a symbol the company says reflects “the promise of a graceful and safe return to planet Earth, just like a feather’s gentle descent.”

This flight caused a stir thanks to to its passenger list. Onboard the capsule wwas Katy Perry, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, and four other crew members, all part of an all-female trip to space.

Blue Origin’s flagship for high-altitude tourism is called New Shepard, a service reserved for those able to pay a steep price — the deposit alone runs $150,000.

Mashable reports that Blue Origin is aiming for bigger targets. In January, the company launched its New Glenn rocket for the first time. The 320-foot-tall vehicle, named after astronaut John Glenn, uses seven engines and is designed for heavy-lift missions. New Glenn puts Blue Origin directly into competition with SpaceX, the dominant player in the private rocket industry.

Last month, PetaPixel reported on a failed rocket launch from the Arctic Andøya Spaceport in Norway. The rocket blasted upward before crashing into the sea and exploding. The footage is made all the more spectacular by the beautiful Nordic scenery.