Amanda Ngoc Nguyen spent weeks learning Vietnamese lines to greet her homeland from space

"Hello Vietnam! I am flying for Vietnamese young girls to see themselves in the stars. While I may be the first, I won't be the last," Nguyen said in a video posted to her TikTok on April 17. The video was recorded during a flight organized by Blue Origin, the space technology company founded by Jeff Bezos.

Blue Origin's first all-female crew launched from West Texas, U.S., at 9:31 a.m. ET (13:31 GMT) on April 14 aboard the reusable suborbital New Shepard capsule.

The crew included former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, singer Katy Perry, "CBS Mornings" co-host Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and media executive Lauren Sánchez, Bezos’s fiancée.

They reached the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, experienced a brief period of weightlessness, and safely returned to Earth after a flight lasting approximately 11 minutes, according to a Blue Origin livestream.

"As soon as I finished operating my experiments, I wanted to honor the promise I made to the Vietnamese National Space Center to address Vietnam in space. I spent weeks reciting the lines to make sure I could say them from memory when I was there. I'm so glad it paid off. Hello Vietnam!" Nguyen commented on her greeting video on TikTok.

 

 

Amanda Ngoc Nguyen spent weeks learning Vietnamese lines to greet her homeland from space

Chia sẻ về thông điệp xin chào Việt Nam từ không gian

According to The Cut, Nguyen had taken a moment to stare out the capsule window before recording the nine-second message for Vietnam with a camera strapped to her head. Then the mission control told her and other crew members to get back into their seats for the ride back to Earth.

Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and activist, carried along with her 169 lotus seeds provided by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. They are expected to be used in post-flight research to examine how space travel affects plant growth.

She also brought some in-orbit projects, including one experiment that tested material for wound dressing in microgravity, Space reported.

Amanda Nguyen at an event in New York, December 2024. Photo by AFP

Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.S. Nguyen Quoc Dung attended the New Shepard mission on April 14 and presented a congratulatory letter from State President Luong Cuong to Nguyen. In the letter, the president expressed his joy and pride that for the first time a woman of Vietnamese origin had flown into space, affirming the talent and intelligence of Vietnamese people in the U.S. and around the world.

Born on Oct. 10, 1991, Nguyen graduated from the Harvard University and interned at NASA in 2013. She then worked at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and served as deputy White House liaison at the U.S. State Department.

In November 2014, she founded Rise, a non-governmental organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of victims of sexual assault, drawing from her own experience as a survivor. In 2019, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to fight for the rights of victims of sexual assault.

Sponsored by nonprofit Space for Humanity, Nguyen's participation in the Blue Origin mission honors her advocacy for sexual assault survivors, as well as her work in STEM education.