Blue Origin is scheduled to launch its latest spaceflight next week with a historic all-female crew. The mission, NS-31, is the 11th human flight for Jeff Bezos’s space tourism company, and 31st overall.
It will include six women: aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe; activist Amanda Nguyen; CBS Mornings host Gayle King; pop singer Katy Perry; film producer Kerianne Flynn; and Lauren Sánchez, an author, TV host turned philanthropist, and Bezos’s fiancée.
Blue Origin is touting it as the first all-female spaceflight since 1963, when the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel to space on a three-day solo mission.
The launch is scheduled for Monday, April 14, at 8:30 a.m. CT, from Blue Origin’s launch site in Van Horn, Texas.
What happens on a Blue Origin spaceflight?
Named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, the New Shepard spacecraft operates autonomously, without a pilot. It is fully reusable and can carry up to six passengers for its suborbital journey.
Each spaceflight lasts about 11 minutes, taking passengers just past the Kármán line — 62 miles above Earth, which some international aviation and aerospace experts consider the threshold of space — allowing the crew to experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
The rocket will then descend back to Earth, with its single engine restarting to slow the booster down to just 6 mph for a controlled landing back on the launchpad. The capsule carrying the crew descends separately, deploying three parachutes for its landing nearby.
Since 2021, Blue Origin has carried a total of 52 people to the edge of space on 10 human flights. Bezos himself was part of the crew on Blue Origin’s first.
How has this crew been preparing?
Two of the crew members have been taking part in zero-gravity simulation flights to get used to the feeling of weightlessness, according to ABC’s Good Morning America.
King said she has been meditating to combat her fear.
“I’m so afraid,” she said on CBS Mornings. “But I’m also so excited.”
“I don’t know how to explain being terrified and excited at the same time,” King added. “It’s like how I felt about to deliver a baby.”
A few days before the launch, the full crew will take part in final training sessions and walkthroughs at the launch site in West Texas, getting fitted in their flight suits and acclimated to the New Shepard capsule.
Space ‘glam’ backlash
The latest Blue Origin mission isn’t without some controversy.
The all-female crew drew criticism over a joint interview it did for a recent Elle magazine cover story in which they revealed they would be getting “glammed up” for the flight.
“Space is going to finally be glam,” Perry said. “We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”
Bowe said she recently went skydiving in Dubai because “I wanted to test out my hair and make sure that it was okay.”
“We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!” Sánchez said.
“I think it’s so important for people to see us like that,” Nguyen said. “This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.”
While co-hosting NBC’s Today With Jenna & Friends, actress Olivia Munn blasted the crew while questioning the need for the mission.
“What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride? I think it’s a bit gluttonous,” she said. “Space exploration was to further our knowledge and to help mankind. What are they gonna do up there that has made it better for us down here?
“I know this is probably obnoxious,” Munn added. “But like, it’s so much money to go to space, and there’s a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs.”
“Some prominent women — the ones able to command attention in our information-saturated world — are going to space for 11 minutes, and they’re using the related publicity to raise awareness about eyelash extensions,” Jessica Grose wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times. “This morally vacuous space stunt should be another nail in the coffin of celebrity feminism.”
The post Blue Origin’s all-female flight is set to launch next week with Gayle King, Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez on board appeared first on Yahoo News.
