Blue Origin is sending an all-female crew into the cosmos aboard New Shepard, its high-flying tourist rocket. Slated for liftoff this spring, the mission reads like a fever dream of pop culture, science, and high society colliding at 62 miles above Earth.
Leading the charge? Journalist and morning show powerhouse Gayle King, pop music icon Katy Perry, and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen. Rounding out the six-person lineup are Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist turned CEO, Kerianne Flynn, a film producer with a philanthropic streak, and Lauren Sánchez, journalist, pilot, and fiancée of Amazon overlord Jeff Bezos.
Sánchez didn’t just sign up—she orchestrated the whole operation, curating a squad of explorers with a mission bigger than just snapping zero-gravity selfies. Blue Origin claims this is about perspective, empowerment, and inspiring generations. But let’s be real: it’s also about making headlines, flexing billionaire-funded ambition, and proving that space tourism is now the playground of the elite.
Nguyen, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her advocacy work, will make history as the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman astronaut. Meanwhile, Blue Origin touts the flight as the first all-female space crew since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s legendary solo mission in 1963.
For context, NASA has tapped 61 women as astronauts over the decades, and the first all-female spacewalk didn’t even happen until 2019. But as commercial space travel booms, the number of women in orbit is finally rising. Just last November, Emily Calandrelli—MIT engineer and TV host—became the 100th woman to break through the Kármán line aboard Blue Origin’s NS-28 mission.
Blue Origin hasn’t locked in a date yet for NS-31, but one thing is certain: when these six women strap in, they won’t just be reaching for the stars—they’ll be rewriting history at 3,800 km/h.
Last modified: March 1, 2025
