What to know about Blue Origin and its all-female mission
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos gave the company’s first all-female crew a pep talk ahead of liftoff.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is launching its New Shepard rocket featuring an all-female six-person crew later Monday morning.
The mission will mark Blue Origin’s 11th flight with humans onboard.
What to know about the launch
A general view of the Blue Origin site is shown on the day Blue Origin’s rocket, New Shepard, blasts off on billionaire Jeff Bezos’ company’s fourth suborbital tourism flight with a six-person crew near Van Horn, Texas, on March 31, 2022. (REUTERS/Ivan Pierre Aguirre)
The aerospace company is aiming for its New Shepard rocket to lift off at 9:30 a.m. ET.
The Blue Shepard rocket, launching from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in Texas, is a “fully reusable, suborbital rocket system,” Blue Origin says on its website.
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During the flight, the six astronauts will travel above the Karman Line in a capsule and have a brief period of weightlessness before coming back to Earth, according to the company. The Karman Line, 62 miles above Earth, demarcates the edge of space.
The entire flight is expected to span about 11 minutes.
Blue Origin is providing a live webcast of the mission that is slated to start at 8 a.m. ET.
All-female crew
Six women make up the crew for Blue Origin’s NS-31 mission: STEMBoard CEO Aisha Bowe; bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen; “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King; musician Katy Perry; film producer Kerianne Flynn; and Bezos Earth Fund Vice Chair Lauren Sanchez. Sanchez is also Bezos’ fiancée.
Bezos and Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Bezos created Blue Origin about 25 years ago.
The company has conducted 10 human flights with New Shepard since 2021, with its 10th occurring in late February. Its Blue Shepard program has 30 flights total under its belt, according to Blue Origin.
Blue Origin has also been creating a two-stage New Glenn rocket, which achieved its first launch in mid-January.
The company has described the rocket as crucial to its “efforts to establish sustained human presence on the Moon, harness in-space resources, provide multi-mission, multi-orbit mobility through Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low Earth orbit.”
Blue Origin and its New Glenn rocket on April 4 landed a nearly $2.4 billion National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract earlier in April for seven missions, adding to two other “national security launch-related” contracts it has previously received, according to a press release.
The company was also tapped by NASA in 2023 for building a lunar lander.
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