Did Katy Perry really go to space? Conspiracy theories erupt after viral door video

On April 15, Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule made a smooth parachute-assisted landing in Texas after a short trip to space. The capsule carried an all-female crew including pop star Katy Perry, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, CBS host Gayle King, and others.

But while the team landed safely, a moment caught on camera has lit up the internet with conspiracy theories about whether the trip was even real.

The door that opened... too easily?

According to The Daily Mail Online, a clip showed what looked like the capsule door being opened from the inside just before Bezos arrived with a special tool to “unlock” it from outside. After being opened briefly, the door was shut again before Bezos made his entrance.

This small slip-up was enough to set off a wave of online doubt, with conspiracy theorists pointing to the footage as supposed “proof” the entire space trip was staged.

A flurry of online comments quickly followed. One person wrote, “It was fake. The girls opened the door to begin with from the inside with no tools. They then waited a few minutes, and Jeff Bezos stepped up with some sort of tool and acted like he unlocked the latch.”

Another added, “This s*** is so fake. Watch the door be opened from the inside; then they need a tool to open it from the outside.”

A third chimed in, “Can’t post this fake s*** enough. Door opens from the inside, they’re told to close it because the door can ONLY be opened by an outside person.”

Some even questioned the quality of the capsule itself: “Doesn’t look like a pressurised hatch to me. More like a flimsy door,” one commenter said.

And another suggested the whole setup was a simulation: “Pretty sure pressurised doors don’t open inwards. The capsule looks like it’s an inflatable tent and the only footage they showed was the ‘weightlessness’ part which you can achieve in a plane.”

Why all the suspicion?

The main concern among sceptics is the capsule’s door. Most spacecraft have outward-opening, pressurised doors that require outside help to unlock. The ease with which the New Shepard door appeared to open from the inside raised a few eyebrows.

The capsule’s exterior also looked spotless after landing, which added to the doubts. In typical space missions, the intense heat from re-entry often leaves the exterior visibly scorched. But in this case, the capsule looked as if it had hardly been through anything.

Experts weigh in

Dr Daniel Jolley, a psychology expert from the University of Nottingham, explained why such doubts spread so quickly. “Space is vast, complex and largely inaccessible to most people – in this context, it becomes easier for some individuals to question the official narrative,” he said.

What actually happened?

In reality, the New Shepard capsule doesn’t go far enough into space to require heavy-duty reinforcements. It just passes the Karman Line (the 100 km mark that defines space), reaching about 107 km in altitude. That means it avoids the full-on vacuum and intense conditions that higher missions face.

Because of this, its doors don’t need to be the same as those on a spacecraft like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. And since the re-entry doesn’t cause the same level of heating, the capsule returns looking much cleaner than others that go further.

The NS-31 mission launched at 14:30 BST from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in Texas. The flight lasted just 11 minutes, carrying the crew up past the edge of space before gently floating back down to Earth. Despite the successful journey, this short glitch in the choreography has given fuel to sceptics who already believed the mission was staged.

(with agency inputs)