Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sanchez to Join Historic All-Female Blue Origin Spaceflight
Pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, are set to embark on a historic spaceflight aboard a Blue Origin rocket. The mission will mark the first all-female spaceflight crew in over 60 years.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard to Carry Six Women to Space
The all-female crew will travel aboard the New Shepard rocket, an 18-meter (59-foot) suborbital spacecraft designed for short space tourism missions. The flight will take the crew to the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space. Passengers will experience a few minutes of microgravity before returning to Earth via a parachute-assisted landing in the West Texas desert.
Joining Perry, King, and Sanchez will be NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics researcher Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Blue Origin has yet to announce a launch date for the mission.
A Historic Milestone in Spaceflight
The last recorded all-female space mission occurred in 1963 when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Since then, female astronauts have participated in space missions, but this will be the first all-female commercial spaceflight.
New Shepard first carried humans in July 2021, when Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark took part in the inaugural flight. Since then, the rocket has flown several high-profile passengers, including former NFL player Michael Strahan and Star Trek actor William Shatner, who became the oldest person in space at age 90.
Blue Origin Expands Its Space Efforts
Blue Origin continues to grow its space ambitions. Last month, the company’s New Glenn rocket successfully launched from Florida, marking its first step into Earth’s orbit. This move positions Bezos’ space venture as a competitor to SpaceX in the satellite launch industry.
With this historic all-female flight, Blue Origin is further cementing its role in advancing commercial space travel and inspiring future generations of women in space exploration.
With inputs from Reuters
