Watch Live: All-female Blue Origin crew with Bezos' fiancee, Katy Perry, Gayle King set for launch today
Jeff Bezos' fiancee Lauren Sánchez is leading an all-female crew including pop singer Katy Perry and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King for a short trip to space this morning.
Riding on Bezos' Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard rocket, the six women, which also includes Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen and Kerianne Flynn, are looking to lift off from the company's West Texas launch site during a window that opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
This will be the 11th human spaceflight for New Shepard, and 31st mission overall. The flight sends the New Shepard capsule on a short 10- to 12-minute trip that lets passengers experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth before their capsule returns for a parachute-assisted landing.
They will travel above the Karman line, about 62 miles high, the internationally recognized altitude of having reached space.
It's the first all-female crew to head to space since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's solo mission when she became the first woman in space on June 16, 1963 on the Vostok 6 mission.
King said she was nervous but was told be her friends to take advantage of it.
'As excited as I am, I'll be glad when we come back down,' she said ahead of the launch
Sánchez is a former entertainment TV journalist. She organized the crew. Bowe is a former NASA rocket scientist, Nguyen a bioastronautics research scientist and Flynn built a career in fashion and then produced films including 'This Changes Everything.'
This mission will increase to 58 the number of humans since 2021 Blue Origin has taken to the edge of space, including four who have flown twice.
Bezos was on the first one back in 2021 while other flights have taken up the likes of Star Trek's William Shatner, NFL Hall of Famer and 'Good Morning America' co-host Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American in space for whom the rocket is named.
He told the crew the trip would be the 'most amazing, most profound experience.'
'I'm so excited for you. I don't want to get off. I want to go with you,' he said. 'When you get back I can't wait to hear how it's changed you. I love all of you. See you soon. Godspeed. Gradatim Ferociter.'
Gradatim Ferociter is Blue Origin's Latin motto, that translates to 'step by step ferociously.'
Central Florida couple Marc and Sharon Hagle were among the four who have been two-time riders, having taken the trip in both 2022 and this past November. Another Central Floridian to take the trip was Brevard County millionaire Steve Young.
Blue Origin has been a fan of knocking out superlatives with its New Shepard rocket having flown the tallest (Strahan at 6 feet 5 inches tall), the oldest (90-year-old Ed Dwight Jr.) and youngest (18-year-old Oliver Daemen) people to space.
The space tourism flights are just part of Bezos' company's business. It flew the much larger heavy-left New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral for the first time this past January, and has said its second will launch this spring. Also on Blue Origin's plate are plans for a commercial space station and the Blue Moon lunar lander.
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