Blue Origin to launch all-female space crew

Katy Perry can finally sing 🎶“extraterrestrial”🎶 in space.

Blue Origin’s latest commercial spaceflight is set to launch this morning, sending six women into orbit on the company’s New Shepard rocket. The crew includes Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, Kerianne Flynn, Lauren Sánchez, Gayle King, and—yes—popstar Katy Perry.

• Today’s launch will be the first all-female flight since the Soviet Union's Valentina Tereshkova flew into space solo in 1963.
• Overall, ~11% of astronauts who have ventured into the great dark void have been women.

Up, Up, and Away

The crew’s journey past the "Kármán line," the internationally recognized boundary of space, will last a total of 11 minutes. They’ll experience around four minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth—something that moved actor William Shatner to tears following a previous flight—before heading back down to the landing pad.

It’ll be glam: In preparation for today’s flight, Sánchez—journalist, pilot, children’s book author, philanthropist, and fiancée of Jeff Bezos—worked with clothing brand Monse to design new spacesuits specifically for women.

Zoom out: The launch comes as Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, is working to catch up to and better compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Blue Origin has successfully completed 30 flights to-date, vs. SpaceX’s 470.