Pop superstar Katy Perry is about to take her hit song “E.T.” to a whole new level—literally. The singer is set to join a six-member, all-female crew on Blue Origin’s next space flight this spring, the company announced Thursday. Maybe she could shoot down the asteroid that’s heading our way.
Perry will “shoot across the sky” alongside journalist Lauren Sanchez (fiancée of Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos) and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King.
Blue Origin, which has been sending wealthy tourists and celebrities to space since 2021, will launch the mission aboard its New Shepard rocket, named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
The suborbital flight will last just 10 or 11 minutes, but passengers will experience a few precious moments of microgravity as the capsule soars beyond the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, 100 kilometers above sea level.
Joining Perry, Sanchez, and King on this historic mission are research scientist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. This marks the first all-female spaceflight crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963.
Blue Origin has already flown 52 people to suborbital space across 10 crewed missions, including notable passengers like Star Trek’s William Shatner and Bezos himself, who flew on the inaugural crewed flight. While ticket prices remain a mystery, celebrities often snag complimentary seats.
This mission is another feather in the cap for Bezos, whose space ambitions rival those of Elon Musk. While Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, Bezos envisions moving heavy industry off-planet to preserve Earth, which he calls “humanity’s blue origin.”
For now, though, all eyes are on Katy Perry and her fellow crew members as they prepare to make history—and maybe even a few TikToks—in space.
