The Amazon founder’s Blue Origin is due to undertake its 11th flight with six women on board
Mission NS-31 is historic, marking the first time since 1963 that an all-female crew has launched into space, highlighting a significant moment in space exploration and gender representation.
Though billed as the first all-female crew to reach the Kármán line, the internationally recognised boundary of space at an altitude of 62 miles, it is not technically so: the cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova flew a solo mission to space in 1963.
The mission features several well-known public figures, including: Katy Perry, international pop star; Gayle King, a respected broadcasting personality known for her work on television and in journalism; Lauren Sánchez, a journalist and media personality, who is also the fiancee of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of Blue Origin.
Developed by Blue Origin, the spacecraft is built to be fully reusable and is specifically engineered for human spaceflight.
The rocket operates without pilots. Instead, passengers ride in a compact, round crew capsule positioned at the top of the vehicle.
The launch window for Mission NS-31 opens at 8:30am local time in Texas (2.30pm BST), with liftoff taking place from Blue Origin’s launch site in the state.
Katy Perry is undertaking final preparations before she joins an all-female crew on a BlueOrigin space flight.
When I was invited to come on this voyage, I looked up the capsule. On the very front of it is the outline in the shape of a feather and when I saw that it was like a total confirmation because my mum has always called me feather.
And so I’m in space training today and there’s a lot to digest. We’re almost finished with the day and they showed us the capsule and we run simulations in another capsule and tested the noise and what to expect and all these different things and they reveal the capsule name.
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