Katy Perry and Gayle King to fly to space
Katy Perry and Gayle King to Join Historic All-Female Blue Origin Space Mission
Pop icon Katy Perry and CBS journalist Gayle King will make history this spring as part of the first all-female crew aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, the company announced Thursday.
The groundbreaking NS-31 mission will be Blue Origin’s 11th human spaceflight and 31st mission overall, marking a significant milestone in space tourism. While no specific launch date has been announced, the company confirmed the flight will take place in the coming months.
The mission’s crew of six remarkable women includes:
- Katy Perry, singer, songwriter and founder of the Firework Foundation, which empowers children in underserved communities through the arts
- Gayle King, journalist, co-host of “CBS Mornings,” and SiriusXM radio host
- Lauren Sánchez, helicopter pilot, Emmy Award-winning journalist, and fiancée of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, who “brought the mission together” according to the company
- Aisha Bowe, former NASA aerospace engineer and CEO of STEMBoard, an engineering firm serving U.S. government organizations
- Amanda Nguyen, bioastronautics researcher who worked on NASA’s final space shuttle mission and founder of Rise, a nonprofit for survivors of sexual violence
- Kerianne Flynn, film producer known for “This Changes Everything” and “Lilly”
During the approximately 10-minute suborbital flight, the crew will travel to an altitude exceeding 62 miles—the internationally recognized boundary of space known as the Kármán line. While brief, the journey will allow participants to experience weightlessness and witness Earth from a perspective few have seen.
King, who announced her participation on “CBS Mornings,” admitted the opportunity wasn’t originally on her bucket list. “This was never my dream,” she said. “And somebody said, ‘Maybe you need to have new dreams, Gayle.’ … I don’t know how to explain being terrified and excited at the same time.”
The mission continues Blue Origin’s tradition of including celebrities and breaking new ground in spaceflight. Previous notable passengers have included company founder Jeff Bezos, who flew on Blue Origin’s first crewed mission in 2021, along with “Star Trek” actor William Shatner and “Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan.
The New Shepard rocket, named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space in 1961, is fully reusable and designed specifically for space tourism. Unlike the International Space Station, which orbits approximately 250 miles above Earth, the New Shepard’s suborbital flights reach just beyond the edge of space before returning to Earth.
Blue Origin’s upcoming mission represents an important step forward for women in space exploration, potentially inspiring a new generation of female astronauts and scientists to reach for the stars.
