Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Four Trailblazing Women Are Headed to Space

Images via DFree; Eugene Powers; Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock

Blue Origin is sending an all-female crew to space this spring aboard its New Shepard tourism rocket, marking a historic moment in spaceflight. Among the six women making the journey are journalist Gayle King, pop icon Katy Perry, and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen.

Joining them are Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist and CEO of STEMBoard; Kerianne Flynn, a film producer and philanthropist; and Lauren Sánchez, a pilot, journalist, and vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund. Sánchez, who is engaged to Blue Origin’s founder Jeff Bezos, is the driving force behind this mission, bringing the team together.

Nguyen, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, will make history as the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman astronaut. This mission, called NS-31, will be Blue Origin’s 11th crewed flight beyond the Kármán line—the internationally recognized boundary of space, about 62 miles above Earth.

The company has yet to announce a specific launch date, but when the mission lifts off, it will be the first all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo journey in 1963. As space tourism continues to expand, more women have been making the journey. In November, MIT engineer and TV host Emily Calandrelli became the 100th woman to travel to space.