Katy Perry, Gayle King to fly to space on Blue Origin’s all-women flight

Pop star Katy Perry and CBS’s Gayle King are set to fly to space alongside Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, on an upcoming all-women flight of Blue Origin’s tourist rocket.

In a blog post on Thursday, Blue Origin announced the next six-person crew of its New Shepard rocket, which also includes Kerianne Flynn, a producer; Aisha Bowe, a former NASA scientist and chief executive officer of STEMBoard; and Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and advocate for survivors of sexual violence.

Sánchez first announced plans to fly to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket with an entirely female crew back in 2023 when speaking with Vogue. At the time, she said the women were all remarkable and they were all “paving the way for women.”

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is designed to fly paying customers to the edge of space and back for a quick taste of weightlessness on a roughly 11-minute trip.

Bezos first flew into space in July 2021 with three other passengers. Other celebrities who have taken flight with Blue Origin include actor William Shatner, who was 90 years old at the time, in October 2021 and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan in December 2021.

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. plans to fly its upgraded spaceplane in the US during the summer of 2026, which would end a nearly two-year hiatus from flying to space.

--With assistance from Nibras Suliman and Tonya Garcia.