(ENews)-Boom, boom, boom Katy Perry is looking for an adventure brighter than the moon, moon, moon.
In fact, she might even see it on her latest voyage. The “Firework” singer is set to travel to space for Blue Origin’s latest mission, which is scheduled to lift off from Launch Site One in West Texas April 14 at 8:30 a.m. local time.
And as she shoots across the sky—or rather to the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space known as the Kármán line—she won’t be doing it alone. Perry will be joined by CBS Mornings host Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics research scientist and activist Amanda Nguyen, and former TV anchor Lauren Sánchez, whose fiancé Jeff Bezos is the founder of the private space company.
They’re the first all-female spaceflight crew since 1963, when the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova completed a social mission and became the first woman to go to space. The group will be traveling on board the New Shepard, which Blue Origin describes as its “fully reusable, suborbital rocket system.” The trip, which the organization estimates will last about 11 minutes, will be New Shepard’s 11th human flight and its 31st mission overall—hence the name NS-31.
“I’m really excited about the engineering of it all,” Perry said on an April 11 interview with ITV News. “I’m excited to learn more about STEM and just the math about what it takes to accomplish this type of thing.”
And for the “E.T.” artist, the journey fulfills a longtime dream.
“I’ve always been interested in astrophysics and interested in astronomy and astrology and the stars,” she continued. “I feel like we are made of stardust and we all come from the stars, and it will be exciting to see them twinkle from that site. And also have such an appreciation for Mother Earth when we see it in that way. Many people, not many, but the people that have gone have had real profound things to say and have brought down ideas that have been world-changing.”
However, traveling to space hasn’t been a yearslong bucket list item for everyone on the mission.
“I’m so afraid,” King admitted on a February episode of CBS Mornings, “but I’m also so excited about it.”
And as headlines about this mission continue to orbit around, keep reading to learn more about the journey, the crew, the excitement and the criticism.
Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2000, Blue Origin is a private space company headquartered in Kent, Washington.
According to its website, the organization aims to leverage space’s resources to benefit Earth as well as expand humanity’s presence in space through increased transportation and the creation of living and working destinations in the low Earth orbit.
Blue Origin says it’s working to achieve these goals by building reusable rockets and engines to reduce the cost of space travel, make space travel more accessible to civilians and drive sustainability.
“Our vision is millions of people living and working in space,” Bezos said during a talk at the 2016 Pathfinder Awards. “We want to reduce the cost of getting into space dramatically by focusing on reusability.”
So how much does it cost to book a seat on a Blue Origin flight? While the company doesn’t list its prices on its website, it does note a $150,000 deposit is required.
Who Is Part of the Crew for Blue Origin’s NS-31 Mission?
The crew for mission NS-31 consists of singer Katy Perry, CBS Mornings host Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, STEMBoard founder and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics research scientist and activist Amanda Nguyen, and former TV anchor Lauren Sánchez (who is engaged to Bezos). In fact, this is the first all-female spaceflight crew since 1963, when the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova went on a solo mission and became the first woman to travel to space.
Nguyen is making history as the first Vietnamese woman to travel to space, and Bowe is entering the history books as the first person of Bahamian heritage to go where few have gone before.
What Are Some of the NS-31 Crew’s Reasons for Going to Space?
Each member of the crew has her own reasons for being part of this mission.
In a recent cover story for ELLE, many of the women expressed their desire to inspire future generations. For Perry, this includes reminding Daisy, the daughter she shares with fiancé Orlando Bloom, to “never have limits on her dreams and show her that any type of person can reach their dreams—no matter your background, your ethnicity, your economic situation, or your education level.”
As for King, who has been honest about her nerves, she told the magazine she hopes to encourage people to step outside their comfort zones.
“Once I do it,” she added, “then the doors will open for so many other people who thought, ‘Okay, I was one of those reluctant people, but now I’m here and I am really, really excited to go.'”
And Nguyen noted that, for her, it’s getting the chance to fulfill a “dream deferred.”
“I worked at NASA, I studied the stars—astrophysics at Harvard and MIT—but life got in the way,” she told the publication. “Gender-based violence is a big reason why so many women in STEM don’t continue on with their training, and I was one of those women. After I was sexually assaulted, I traded my telescope to fight for my rights as a sexual assault survivor. I drafted the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights, passed it in Congress and at the United Nations. And then, after 10 years, I was like, ‘I want to honour the person that I was before I was hurt.'”
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