Kent-based Blue Origin announced its all-female New Shepard-31 launch is set for Monday, April 14 from Launch Site One in West Texas.
The company reported in February that the flight will have its first all-female crew of Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn and Lauren Sánchez.
Perry is the biggest-selling female artist in Capitol Records’ history and one of the best-selling music artists of all time with over 115 billion streams; King is an award-winning journalist, co-host of CBS Mornings, editor-at-large of Oprah Daily, and the host of Gayle King in the House on SiriusXM radio; Bowe is a former NASA rocket scientist, entrepreneur, and global STEM advocate; Nguyen is a bioastronautics research scientist.
Flynn has spent the last decade channeling her energy into community-building through board service and nonprofit work with The Allen-Stevenson School, The High Line and Hudson River Park; and Sanchez is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author and engaged to Jeff Bezos, the owner of Blue Origin, which opened in 2000 in Kent. He also owns Amazon and the Washington Post.
Blue Origin charges people to be part of the crew and does not reveal its prices. Some crew members are sponsored by others. Blue Origin completed its 10th human spaceflight Feb. 25. It has flown 52 people into space.
The flight takes about 10 or 11 minutes and goes above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.
It will be the first all-female flight crew since Russian Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight in 1963.
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