Blue Origin’s First All-Female Spaceflight to Feature Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez

Washington: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is set to embark on a historic spaceflight with a star-studded crew, including pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez, who is also Bezos' fiancée.

The six-member, all-female crew also includes research scientist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is designed for customers who pay for the chance to visit the edge of space and experience a brief period of weightlessness on a roughly 11-minute trip.
 

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The mission, which is set to launch this spring, will mark the first all-female spaceflight crew since 1963, when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova made her historic solo flight.

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the aim of enabling tourists and celebrities to explore space. The company recently completed the first orbital test flight of its larger rocket, New Glenn.

Bezos himself first flew into space in July 2021 with his brother. Other celebrities who have participated in Blue Origin missions include actor William Shatner, who became the oldest person to fly at 90 years old, and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan, who flew in December 2021.

Sánchez and Perry will embark on the New Shepard mission, launching from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas.

The experience typically lasts 10 to 11 minutes, from liftoff to landing, during which passengers experience microgravity as their capsule soars beyond the Kármán line for a few minutes.

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Blue Origin said in a statement that this mission will be the 11th human flight for the New Shepard program and the 31st in the company’s history. To date, the program has flown 52 people above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.

The company also noted that this will be the first all-female flight crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight in 1963.

Reuters reported that the company’s giant New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida last month on its first mission to space. This marks a significant step into Earth's orbit for Bezos' company as it looks to compete with SpaceX in the satellite launch business.

Several notable personalities were part of the New Glenn mission, including venture capitalist Lane Bess (a repeat Blue Origin flyer), Spanish TV host Jesús Calleja, physicist-entrepreneur Elaine Chia Hyde, reproductive endocrinologist Richard Scott, hedge fund partner Tushar Shah, and a sixth unnamed crewmember.