Baby, you're a firework! Blue Origin’s first all-female spaceflight to feature Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Gayle King

Pop icon Katy Perry is trading the stage for the stars as she joins an all-female crew on Blue Origin’s upcoming space mission this spring, the company announced on Thursday.

Perry will be joined by journalist Lauren Sanchez, fiancée of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King. The six-member team also includes research scientist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

This mission will mark the first all-female spaceflight crew since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo flight in 1963.

A pop star’s cosmic leapFor Perry, who once sang about wanting to “shoot across the sky” in Firework, the voyage feels almost poetic. She also referenced space in her hit song E.T., making this trip a surreal full-circle moment.

The flight will take place aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which has flown 52 people to space since its first crewed mission in 2021. Passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness as they cross the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space at 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level. The capsule will then parachute back to Earth, landing in the Texas desert.

Blue Origin’s growing space ambitionsWhile SpaceX CEO Elon Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, Bezos has his own vision: moving heavy industry into space to preserve Earth, humanity’s “blue origin.” His company recently launched the giant New Glenn rocket, a crucial step toward competing in the commercial space sector.

With a NASA contract to build a lunar lander for future Artemis missions and plans to launch the Kuiper satellite network to rival Musk’s Starlink, Bezos is making a big bet on space.

Perry and her fellow astronauts will soon be part of that journey, proving that when it comes to reaching for the stars, the sky is no limit.