Katy Perry to join all-woman Blue Origin spaceflight

Pop singer Katy Perry is set to reach the edge of space on Monday as part of an all-woman crew aboard a Blue Origin rocket operated by Jeff Bezos’s space company.

The sub-orbital mission, scheduled to launch from West Texas at approximately 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT), will see Perry and five other women, including Bezos’s fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, travel more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Earth’s surface aboard the New Shepard rocket.

Joining Perry and Sanchez on the flight are former NASA scientist Amanda Nguyen, TV host Gayle King, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

According to reports, the fully automated journey will last about 10 minutes. The New Shepard rocket will launch vertically before its crew capsule detaches mid-flight. The capsule will then descend back to Earth, slowed by parachutes and a retro-thrust system for a soft landing.

During the brief time in microgravity, the passengers will have the opportunity to unbuckle and float inside the capsule, crossing the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.

This mission is notable as the first all-woman spaceflight crew since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963.