Vietnamese-American astronaut and activist Amanda Nguyen has bravely detailed the severe depression and online harassment she endured following her historic journey to space with Blue Origin earlier this year.
The Historic Flight and Immediate Backlash
On 14 April 2025, Nguyen, alongside pop icon Katy Perry, broadcast journalist Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez, wife of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, launched from Launch Site One in Van Horn, Texas. The brief, 11-minute suborbital flight made Nguyen the first Vietnamese woman to travel to space.
However, the landmark mission was swiftly met with criticism. Detractors questioned its environmental impact and the purpose of such a journey, labelling it a wasteful use of resources. For Nguyen, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and bioastronautics researcher, the professional triumph of realising a lifelong dream was quickly overshadowed.
A 'Tsunami' of Misogynistic Harassment
In a candid Instagram post, the 34-year-old described facing a "tsunami of harassment" that left her professional achievements "buried under an avalanche of misogyny." She revealed the scale of the negative reaction was so vast that even a small fraction of it became overwhelming, amounting to "billions of hostile impressions."
"It amounted to billions of hostile impressions," she wrote, "an onslaught no human brain has evolved to endure." The fallout was debilitating. Nguyen confessed she was unable to leave her bed for a week after returning to Earth and, a month later, was so overcome with emotion she had to hang up on a senior Blue Origin staff member because she could not speak through her tears.
Finding Strength and Looking Forward
Nguyen, whose parents fled Vietnam as refugees, drew a poignant parallel between her experience and history. "When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, bombs rained down on Vietnam. This year, when my boat refugee family looked at the sky, instead of bombs they saw the first Vietnamese woman in space," she stated, adding powerfully: "We came on boats, and now we’re on spaceships."
Now, eight months after the flight, Nguyen reports that the "fog of grief has started to lift." She expressed profound gratitude for the support from her community and highlighted the positive outcomes, including increased attention for her women's health research and advocacy for sexual assault survivors.
She ended her emotional statement with a message of resilience, accompanied by a photo of her younger self at Harvard, simply captioned: "For her."
