Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is set to launch its first all-female crewed mission aboard New Shepard this spring.
The six-person team includes journalist Gayle King, singer Katy Perry, and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen. Also joining them are Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist and CEO of STEMBoard, Kerianne Flynn, a film producer known for her nonprofit work, and pilot-journalist Lauren Sánchez, vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund.
Photo: Bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and Kerianne Flynn, will join the mission too.
Blue Origin confirmed that Sánchez played a key role in assembling the crew. This mission, designated NS-31, marks the first all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo mission in 1963.
Photo: Blue Origin
New Shepard flights take passengers past the Kármán line, 100 km above Earth’s surface, marking the boundary of outer space. The mission will be the 11th human flight aboard the vehicle. Nguyen, a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, will become the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman in space.
The rise of commercial space travel has led to more women reaching space. In November, MIT engineer Emily Calandrelli became the 100th woman to fly to space aboard Blue Origin’s NS-28 mission. Since its inception, NASA has selected 61 female astronauts, and in 2019, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir conducted the first all-female spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
Blue Origin has not yet announced the exact date for the mission.
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