A group of six women, including US singer-songwriter Katy Perry, is to blast off into the upper limits of the Earth’s atmosphere on Monday on a rocket from Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez, a US author and philanthropist, is also set to join the passengers on board the flight, which is scheduled to blast off from western Texas at around 8:30 am (1330 GMT).
According to unofficial reports, the trip comes shortly before Sanchez, 55, and Bezos, 61, are to marry in Venice, Italy, in June.
The remaining crew include TV presenter Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen, founder of a campaign group against sexual violence.
Monday’s venture features the first all-woman space crew since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s historic solo flight in 1963.
10-minute flight to the edge of space
The passengers will be carried more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earth’s surface — beyond the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space — during the flight, which is planned to last some 10 minutes.
The fully automated craft will rise vertically before the crew capsule separates in mid-flight, then returns to the ground in a fall braked by parachutes and a retro rocket.
