Jeff Bezos to send Katy Perry, Gayle King and fiancee to space

Telegraph

27-02-2025

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon tycoon, is sending the singer Katy Perry, broadcaster Gayle King and his fiancee Lauren Sanchez into space in the first all-female commercial space flight.
Blue Origin, Mr Bezos's aerospace company, announced that the trio will blast off as part of a six-woman crew on its next space flight scheduled for spring 2025.
Ms Sanchez, a former news anchor, is the one who 'brought the mission together,' according to Blue Origin.
The space voyage is likely to blast off from Blue Origin's site in Van Horn, West Texas, which has been used for previous New Shepard launches and testing.
Perry and her husband, Orlando Bloom are friends of Mr Bezos and his fiancee, and the couples were pictured sunning themselves last summer aboard the tech billionaire's yacht in Sicily.
Speaking during her CBS morning show on Thursday, King said she consulted with her children and Oprah Winfrey, her close friend, before committing to the spaceflight.
'Once Kirby and Will and Oprah was fine with it, I was fine,' she said. 'I thought Oprah would say 'no, no'. She said, 'I think if you don't do it, when they all come back and you had the opportunity to do it, you will be kicking yourself.' She's right.'
She compared her mixed emotions about the upcoming flight to having a baby.
'I don't know how to explain being terrified and excited at the same time. It's like how I felt about to deliver a baby,' she said.
The launch marks the first all-female space flight since 1963, when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova ventured into outer space on a solo mission.
The six-person crew for the NS-31 mission will also include aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, feminist activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The 11-minute space flight is the 11th human voyage for Blue Origin's New Shepard programme and the 31st in its history.
So far, the program has flown 52 people above the Kármán line, 62 miles above the earth's surface, which is the internationally recognised boundary of space.
During the flight aboard Blue Origin's autonomous, reusable shuttle, the celebrity crew will experience several minutes of weightlessness and witness 'life-changing views' of Earth, according to the company's website.
There will be no pilots onboard the spacecraft.
Mr Bezos has entered into a billionaire space race with Elon Musk's Space X and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. The three men are working to become the dominant carrier in space tourism.
Ms Sanchez, the vice-chairwoman of the Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change has long spoken about her plans to lead the first all-female commercial mission into space.
'She is honoured to lead a team of explorers on a mission that will challenge their perspectives of Earth, empower them to share their own stories, and create lasting impact that will inspire generations to come,' the company said in a statement.
The voyage marks the latest venture into celebrity space flights by Blue Origin.
Mr Bezos himself flew to space in July 2021 aboard the company's New Shepard rocket. In October that same year, Star Trek actor William Shatner became the oldest person to travel to space aged 90, aboard a Blue Origin Flight.
Mr Shatner later revealed in his memoir that he did not enjoy the trip and said it filled him with 'overwhelming sadness'.
'The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness,' he wrote. 'My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.'
Shortly before Mr Bezos' space adventure, Richard Branson became the first space company founder to travel into outer space aboard his Virgin Galactic VSS Unity 22 shuttle.