Singer Katy Perry, former TV host Lauren Sánchez and four other women will fly to the edge of space this spring aboard the New Shepard spacecraft operated by billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company.
Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez will fly into space. Photo: The Cut
According to the New York Times , the aerospace company Blue Origin announced the all-female crew list on Thursday, February 27, including: singer Katy Perry, MC Lauren Sánchez – Mr. Bezos’s fiancee and helicopter pilot, Kerianne Flynn – film producer, Aisha Bowe – former NASA engineer, Amanda Nguyen – Vietnamese-American scientist studying the universe and journalist Gayle King.
The flight will last just over 10 minutes and reach an altitude of over 100 kilometers. According to Blue Origin, Lauren Sánchez will lead the space exploration team this time. Jeff Bezos’ 55-year-old fiancée is described as “an Emmy Award-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author , pilot, entrepreneur, philanthropist and Vice President of the Bezos Earth Fund.”
List of 6 people who will explore space on the New Shepard spacecraft in the next few days. Photo: Blue Origin
The upcoming flight will be New Shepard’s 11th passenger flight and 31st in history. It will also mark the first all-female crew to fly into space since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963. To date, New Shepard has flown 52 people across the Kármán line, the boundary that separates Earth’s atmosphere from outer space.
Mr Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s richest people, will be among the first passengers on New Shepard in 2021, the year of Blue Origin’s first manned flight. The New Shepard space tourism rocket is named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space in 1961 and one of the astronauts who walked on the moon.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket launches from Launch Complex 1 in West Texas in 2022. Photo: Agence France-Presse
Katy Perry, born in 1984 in California, is one of the biggest stars in pop music as a singer and songwriter. Perry has sold more than 143 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Billboard magazine ranked her fourth on its list of “The Greatest Pop Artists of All Time”. In addition to music, Katy is also the founder of the Firework Foundation, an organization that works to empower children in disadvantaged communities through the arts. She was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2013.