Washington:
Multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos’s bride-to-be, Lauren Sánchez, and popstar Katy Perry are set to blast off to space on Monday for an all-female flight. Perry and Sánchez are part of an all-women crew, which also includes journalist and TV presenter Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and entrepreneur and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe.
The six-woman crew will blast off on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket from the company’s launch site in Texas at 8.30 am local time on Monday for an 11-minute-long suborbital flight to the edge of space and back. The mission is part of Blue Origin’s New Shepard programme, named NS-31, and aims to “create a lasting impact that will inspire generations.”
This will be the first flight to space in over 60 years without a man on board, since Russian engineer Valentina Tereshkova travelled to space solo in 1963.
Welcome to West Texas, NS-31 crew! pic.twitter.com/8dFPqiaiZW
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 13, 2025
About The Mission
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket carrying Perry and others will reportedly reach a maximum height of 100km (62 miles) above Earth, technically entering space with the capsule crossing the Karman line, which is internationally recognised as the boundary of space.
While in space, the women will experience weightlessness for around four minutes, and can float around to view the space and the Earth from the capsule’s large windows. The capsule will then descend back to Earth with the help of three parachutes.
Bezos’ fiancee and author Sanchez is leading the mission. She told Elle magazine that other members of the crew were chosen because they had “proven their ability to inspire others”.
Meanwhile, Perry, a best-selling music artist of all time, told Elle that she had been wanting for an opportunity to go to space for almost 20 years. “Even when Blue Origin was first talking about commercial travel to space, I was like, ‘Sign me up! I’m first in line’. And then they called me, and I was like, ‘Really? I get an invite,” she said.
The opportunity was also a dream come true for NASA rocket scientist Bowe, civil rights activist Nguyen and film producer Flynn.
However, the decision to be part of the mission was difficult for US breakfast show host King, who told Elle that “When I got the call from Lauren and Jeff, my first reaction was a no.”
She added that she still has “a lot of trepidation” ahead of the trip.
While these women will technically enter the space, they will, however, not be called astronauts by the Federal Aviation Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) or the US military, all of which have different eligibility criteria for people to be classified as commercial astronauts.
Blue Origin’s ‘Joyrides’
So far, Amazon co-founder Bezos’s self-driven rockets have taken 52 people into space, including the man himself, who joined the New Shepard’s maiden voyage in 2021. Star Trek actor William Shatner, aka Captain James T Kirk, joined the mission in 2022, becoming the oldest person in space at the age of 90.
Shatner later told the media that he was moved to tears by the experience. “When I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold … All I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered,” he said.