Katy Perry to Join Historic All-Female Space Flight on Blue Origin Rocket
Pop star Katy Perry is set to make history as part of Blue Origin’s first all-women spaceflight. Perry will be joined by Jeff Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, journalist Gayle King, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn in the first all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963.
The flight, named NS-31, is scheduled for this spring, though an exact date has not been announced. However, Perry is due to be on tour from April 23rd, so it is currently expected that the flight will take place before then.
The New Shepard rocket will take the crew just beyond the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, about 100 kilometers above Earth. The fully autonomous suborbital flight will last approximately 11 minutes, giving the passengers a brief experience of weightlessness before returning to Blue Origin’s launch site in Texas. Since its inception, the New Shepard program has carried 52 people into space, including celebrities like William Shatner and Michael Strahan.
Perry, who will embark on her Lifetimes Tour starting in late spring, expressed her excitement about the mission. “If you had told me I’d be part of the first all-female crew in space, I would have believed you. Nothing was beyond my imagination as a child,” she said in a recent statement.
Blue Origin credited Sánchez for organizing the mission, calling it an opportunity to "empower them to share their own stories, and create lasting impact that will inspire generations to come."
Nguyen, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, will become the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman in space. The mission highlights growing diversity in space exploration, a topic of increasing importance as space tourism expands. Journalist and space industry expert Seyka Mejeur noted that celebrity involvement helps both generate public interest and make space travel feel more accessible.
With the rise of private spaceflight, companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX are bringing more civilians into space. While this flight is a milestone for gender representation, it also signals a broader shift in space tourism. As excitement builds, all eyes are on Blue Origin to see when NS-31 will take off.
