Picture credits: wikipedia
USA: Blue Origin has announced the crew for its upcoming NS-31 mission, the 11th human flight of the New Shepard program. Set to launch this spring, the mission will carry six accomplished women: Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez.
NS-31 Crew
The crew includes Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist and CEO of STEMBoard, a technology company focused on engineering solutions and STEM education.
Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics researcher and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, has worked on NASA’s STS-135 shuttle mission and the Kepler exoplanet project.
Gayle King, a journalist and co-host of CBS Mornings, recognized for her interviews and reporting across major news events.
Katy Perry, a singer and songwriter known for songs like Firework and Roar, is also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
Kerianne Flynn has worked in nonprofit leadership and documentary filmmaking, producing films on gender equality and social change.
Lauren Sánchez, a journalist and pilot, is the founder of Black Ops Aviation, an aerial film production company, and serves as Vice Chair of the Bezos Earth Fund.
About the Mission and Blue Origin
The NS-31 mission is part of Blue Origin’s ongoing efforts to make space more accessible through suborbital flights. The company’s New Shepard rocket, named after astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space, is designed for brief yet impactful spaceflights. The fully reusable rocket launches passengers past the Kármán line—the internationally recognized boundary of space at 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level—allowing them to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and witness the curvature of Earth before returning to the surface.
New Shepard’s first crewed flight in July 2021 carried Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark. Since then, the rocket has flown multiple notable figures, including Star Trek actor William Shatner, former NFL star and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan, and space enthusiast and artist Oliver Daemen.
Picture credits: Blue Origin
Founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, Blue Origin is focused on developing technologies to enable millions of people to live and work in space.
This mission will be the first all-female spaceflight since the solo mission of Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, in 1963. It marks the 31st flight in New Shepard’s history, bringing the total number of people flown past the Kármán line to 52.
The date for the mission has not yet been disclosed.
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