Pop star Katy Perry, Jeff Bezos’s fiance Lauren Sanchez, and journalist Gayle King will be part of the high-profile six-person crew set to blast off into space on a Blue Origin rocket. The space flight will mark the journey of the first all-female crew in six decades.
Lauren Sanchez revealed her plan to be a part of Blue Origin’s entirely female crew in an interview with Vogue in 2023. Sanchez said the women were all remarkable and “paving the way for women.”
Blue Origin’s all-women space crew will include ‘Roar’ singer Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Gayle King, producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, chief executive officer of STEMBoard, and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen.
Blue Origin announced in a blog post on Thursday that all these ladies will travel to space in the New Shepard rocket.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is a landmark initiative to boost space tourism. The spacecraft is designed to fly paying customers to the edge of space and back for a quick taste of weightlessness on a roughly 11-minute trip.
During the flight, passengers feel a few minutes of microgravity as their capsule soars beyond the Karman line, an imaginary boundary that marks the edge of space. The Karman line is marked nearly 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level.
Jeff Bezos took first flight in space in July 2021 with three other passengers. Good Morning America’s co-host Michael Strahan, Star Trek actor William Shatner, are other celebrities who have been part of Blue Origin’s space flight.
Blue Origin has flown tourists on short hops to space since 2021. Some passengers have gotten free rides, while others have paid a hefty sum to experience weightlessness.
In January, Blue Origin achieved a milestone after it sucessfully launched giant New Glenn rocket for the first time. The development proved to be a crucial step in its expansion into the lucrative commercial launch sector.
