A special mission is taking off today from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas: six women, including Lauren Sánchez, the fiancée of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, will embark on a suborbital space flight aboard the New Shepard rocket.

Six women, including Lauren Sánchez, the fiancée of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, venture on a suborbital space flight aboard the New Shepard rocket. This flight marks the first all-female crew in space since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963.

The crew of the NS-31 mission

The crew consists of:

• Lauren Sánchez: pilot, journalist and fiancée of Jeff Bezos, who was instrumental in putting the crew together.
• Katy Perry: pop star, who wants to set an example for female presence in space with her participation.
• Gayle King: US television presenter and journalist.
• Aisha Bowe: former NASA rocket engineer and founder of the technology company STEMBoard.

The NS-31 mission is the eleventh manned flight of the US spaceflight company Blue Origin’s New Shepard program. The rocket will cross the Kármán line at an altitude of about 100 kilometers, allowing passengers to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth.

The entire flight will last about eleven minutes.

Lauren Sánchez, who is also a pilot, is enthusiastic about the mission: “It’s an honor to fly into space with these inspiring women. Together, we want to show that space is for everyone.”

The launch is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. local time (4:30 p.m. CEST) and can be followed via a livestream from Blue Origin.

With this mission, Blue Origin wants to send a strong signal in favor of diversity and inclusion in space travel.

And hopefully Lauren Sánchez has been smart enough to avoid any dispute with her fiancé in the past 48 hours…

Image:
Lauren Sánchez (55) and Jeff Bezos (61) Credit: APA