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In a historic milestone for commercial space travel, six women — pop icon Katy Perry and broadcast journalist Gayle King among them — will be rocketing into space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket next week. The NS-31 mission will be the first all-female crewed spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963.
Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, confirmed Monday morning launch from Launch Site One, its own private West Texas facility. The flight will be the company’s 11th crewed and 31st overall mission.
Aisha Bowe, a now-retired rocket scientist at NASA and CEO of STEMBoard; Amanda Nguyen, civil rights advocate and space policy expert; film producer and media women’s advocate Kerianne Flynn; and Lauren Sánchez, Emmy Award-winning news journalist and Bezos’ fiancée, accompany Perry and King on the journey. The cast interviewed Elle in a piece that they’ll be “in glam” for the trip — hair and makeup — making this not only a groundbreaking scientific project but also a pop culture phenomenon.
New Shepard, the Alan Shepard-named spacecraft, is a crewed, full-reusability suborbital rocket that lifts people autonomously just above the Kármán line — the 62-mile mark around which space ends. The flight, from ground to ground again, takes approximately 11 minutes, giving people about a couple of minutes of weightlessness and the sight of the curvature of the Earth before descending on parachutes for desert landing.
Though Blue Origin won’t release ticket prices, estimates range between $200,000 and $500,000. A deposit of $150,000 secures a seat. It’s not certain how this crew was chosen or if any paid for their ride, though celebrity attendance has become standard in Blue Origin’s publicly televised missions.
Aside from splashy flights, Blue Origin is establishing itself in the space industry. The company recently completed its first flight of the New Glenn rocket — a massive heavy-lift rocket designed to rival SpaceX’s Starship — and continues to support NASA’s Artemis program with payload testing on New Shepard.
As space travel for commerce continues to evolve, NS-31 is noteworthy not just for who is on board, but for what it represents: a new era of openness, accessibility, and inspiration in the final frontier.
