Katy Perry is ready to “shoot across the sky” like a firework and blast off into space on a Blue Origin rocket.
The E.T. singer will join journalist Gayle King and billionaire Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, on the New Shepard rocket, a 59-foot tall (18-metre) suborbital spacecraft, marking the first all-female flight crew to head to space in more than six decades.
They are set to head to the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, 100 kilometres above sea level, the Bezos-owned Blue Origin said in a statement on Feb. 27.
Perry and her crew, including NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics researcher Amanda Nguyen and movie producer Kerianne Flynn, will experience a few minutes of microgravity before returning to Earth via parachute-assisted landing in the West Texas desert at the company’s Launch Site One.
“Every person on board is a crew member — there are no pilots,” according to a statement from Blue Origin.
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Currently there is no specific date for the mission, but Blue Origin said it would take place this spring.
This will be the 11th human flight for the rocket and its 31st overall. The last recorded all-female spaceflight was the 1963 solo mission of Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.
New Shepard has previously taken other notable names to space like Star Trek actor William Shatner, former NFL player Michael Strahan and Bezos.
Sánchez is said to have “brought the mission together” for the latest flight of the New Shepard rocket, named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
“She is honored to lead a team of explorers on a mission that will challenge their perspectives of Earth, empower them to share their own stories, and create lasting impact that will inspire generations to come,” according to a statement from Blue Origin.
Sánchez described the flight as “a life-changing experience for each of us.”
“Most importantly, I am looking forward to all the women in this crew sharing their story and inspiring future generations to dream big,” she added.
In March 2022, Pete Davidson, Saturday Night Live alum, was supposed to launch into space on New Shepard but later announced that he would “no longer be able” to join the mission.
A company spokesperson told the New York Times Davidson was an “honorary guest” with a complimentary ticket. The other five crew members paid for the flight, though the amount is unknown.
In December 2023, Bezos successfully launched the rocket carrying experiments, which were aboard the failed Blue Origin launch in September 2022. No one was aboard either flight.
The capsule made it to the fringes of space, exposing the experiments to a few minutes of weightlessness, before parachuting back down to the West Texas desert. The rocket landed first after releasing the capsule. It reached an altitude of 66 miles (107 kilometres) during the 10-minute flight.
During the failed launch in 2022, the rocket started to veer off course shortly after liftoff, prompting the escape system to kick in and catapult the capsule off the top. The capsule landed safely, but the rocket came crashing down.
The problem was traced to an overheated rocket engine nozzle that broke apart. Design changes were made to the nozzles and combustion chambers.
— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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