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The 33-year-old civil rights activist experienced a brief moment of weightlessness aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule before returning safely to Earth in an 11-minute suborbital flight launched from West Texas, U.S., on Monday.
As Nguyen greeted her ancestral homeland in Vietnamese during the live broadcast of the flight, her voice filled with emotion, the moment quickly went viral. A clip of the greeting drew thousands of likes and comments across social media.
"I teared up hearing Amanda speak in Vietnamese," one viewer wrote. Others described it as a "moment of pride" for Vietnamese communities around the world.
Amanda Ngoc Nguyen says "Xin chao Vietnam" at 0:28. Video courtesy of Space.com
Nguyen was born in California in 1991 and is the founder and CEO of Rise, a non-profit known for its global work in civil rights and STEM education. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and named Time Woman of the Year in 2022 for championing the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act and advocating for Asian American rights.
Her participation in the flight was sponsored by Space for Humanity, a non-profit that promotes greater access to space and honored Nguyen’s contributions to international communities and her Vietnamese heritage.
In a symbolic gesture, Nguyen carried 169 lotus seeds from Vietnam, provided by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. The seeds will be studied after the flight to examine how space travel affects plant growth.
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Vietnamese American Amanda Ngoc Nguyen. Photo courtesy of Nguyen's Instagram |
After landing, Nguyen stepped out of the New Shepard capsule in West Texas with visible elation. She placed a hand over her heart and raised a fist to the sky, smiling radiantly as she celebrated the milestone flight.
Nguyen flew alongside five other women in what became the first all-female spaceflight in more than 60 years. The crew included pop star Katy Perry, media personality Lauren Sanchez—fiancée of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos—CBS host Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The flight marked the first all-women mission of its kind since 1963, when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space during a nearly three-day solo orbit around Earth.
