Pop star Katy Perry, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez and news anchor Gayle King will be among a six-person crew for Blue Origin’s upcoming flight, marking what Bezos’ aerospace firm said would be the first all-woman crew to travel to space in decades.
The mission will be the first all-woman flight into space in 60 years, Blue Origin said.
Blue Origin announced a six-person crew for its New Shepard program’s latest flight on Thursday: Perry, Sanchez, King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, research scientist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The crew will launch this spring for an 11-minute flight to just above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space about 62 miles above Earth’s surface, the company said.
Blue Origin said in a statement that “every person on board is a crew member” and there are “no pilots,” as the New Shepard spacecraft is fully autonomous.
The last spaceflight featuring an all-woman crew occurred on June 16, 1963, according to NASA, when the Soviet Union launched Valentina Tereshkova alone into space for a three-day flight.
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Blue Origin has sent some celebrities and other paying customers to space over 10 manned flights since 2021, including Bezos, who flew on New Shepard first mission in July 2021. Star Trek actor William Shatner became the oldest person to travel to space when he joined New Shephard’s crew in October 2021 at age 90.
Most passengers on the New Shepard rocket pay for their seat, while notable figures, like Shatner, are flown for free. Blue Origin requires prospective passengers to fill out a form and pay a $150,000 refundable deposit, though the exact price for a ticket isn’t known, however, as early reports indicated a seat would cost at least $200,000. The first ticket ever sold was auctioned online to an anonymous bidder for $28 million in 2021.
Bezos’ Blue Origin has taken more than two dozen people to space, as the company competes against Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richad Branson’s Virgin Galactic to expand access to space tourism. The New Shepard rocket was investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration for a failed launch in September 2022. The FAA closed its investigation in 2023, ruling Blue Origin should take corrective actions on the rocket, including redesigning its engine and nozzle components. Blue Origin has launched New Shepard 19 times without a crew, including earlier missions to send science and “research payloads” to collect data and conduct experiments in space, in addition to sending thousands of post cards from the nonprofit Club for the Future.
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