Pop singer Katy Perry and presenter Lauren Sánchez, committed to billionaire Jeff Bezos, will perform on Monday next to an exclusively feminine crew a suborbital flight aboard a Blue Origin rocket.
Perry, Sánchez and four other women will take off from the west of the state of Texas at 08h30 local (13h30 GMT) and ascend more than 100 kilometers of altitude in the New Shepard rocket of the aerospace company, owned by Bezos.
The completely automated rocket will take off vertically and the capsule will be separated during the flight, before returning to the ground braking by a parachute and a retropropulsor.
It will be the first space flight composed exclusively of women, from the historic solo journey of the Cosmonauta and Soviet engineer Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963.
In addition to the American singer and Sánchez, the flight will be composed of the CBS Mornings Gayle King program, the research scientist Amanda Nguyen, the ex -specialist in Nasa Aisha Bowe rockets and the film producer Kerianne Flynn.
This is the eleventh suborbital flight that Blue Origin performs, which since 2021 offers space tourism trips in its New Shepard rocket. The prices of these trips are not public.
In a recent interview with Elle magazine, Perry explained that he will undertake the adventure to inspire his daughter Daisy to “never put limits to his dreams.”
During the trip of about ten minutes in total from takeoff to landing, the six passengers will exceed the Karman line that is 100 km above sea level, according to an international convention. They can take off from their seats and briefly experience the microgravity condition.
To date, Blue Origin has taken 52 people to the suborbital space in 10 manned missions.
Among the celebrities who in the past traveled aboard the New Shepard are Shatner William, legendary actor of the Star Trek science fiction saga, and Jeff Bezos himself, who was on the inaugural flight with a crew.
Bezos competes with the company Virgin Galactic, which also offers suborbital flights. But Blue Origin also has the ambition to go further in the flight market in orbit and compete with Space X, of the richest man in the world Elon Musk.
In January, he successfully completed his first unmanned orbital flight, using a much more powerful pitcher called New Glenn.
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