Lauren Sanchez to visit space on fiancé Jeff Bezos’ rocket! Check out the launch timing and more of Blue Origin’s all-female spaceship
Jeff Bezos has ‘big things’ planned for his bride-to-be!
The Amazon founder is blasting his soon-to-be-wife, Lauren Sanchez, to space, as part of his pre-wedding gift to his fiancée! Sanchez is taking a trip to space, as part of her pre-wedding celebrations, along with her all-female passengers on board for the flight.
Here’s all you need to know about the all-female spaceflight.
The all-female flight!
It’s not a new piece of information that Jeff Bezos is all set to get hitched this summer, with his long-time partner and fiancée Lauren Sanchez, and all the hullabaloo around the heavyweight wedding has already started. Although the wedding is reportedly not before late June, the festivities are expected to start weeks before the actual wedding.
Sanchez’s flight to space in Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket, with five more female guests, reportedly is part of that celebration!
The private spaceflight company owned by Bezos had announced that Gayle King, Katy Perry, and Lauren Sánchez will join three other women on its upcoming mission, revealing that the 11th crewed flight, with an all-women crew, would board the New Shepard rocket. As reported by NBC News, a ticket for the ride in the Blue Origin Rocket goes into nothing short of six digits!
The launch of Blue Origin New Shepard:
Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle from the company’s West Texas site on Monday, April 14. The launch window opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT, and can be watched live via the company.
A livestream of the New Shepard launch will be available on Blue Origin’s website 90 minutes before liftoff, and it will be simulcast on YouTube and the Blue Origin X account.
Monday’s mission is known as NS-31, because it will be the 31st flight to date for New Shepard, a reusable rocket-capsule combo. This will be the 11th crewed flight for New Shepard; the other missions have been uncrewed research jaunts.
NS-31 will also be the first all-female spaceflight since June 16, 1963, when the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova launched on a three-day solo trip to Earth orbit.
Who are on board NS-31 along with Lauren Sanchez?
Apart from Bezos’ fiancée Sanchez, the other passengers of the Blue Origin all-female spaceflight are pop star Katy Perry, “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King, author and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen, STEMBoard CEO and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
NS-31 is set to launch to suborbital space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle from the company’s West Texas site on Monday.
The space fashion:
Only a few days ago, Perry posed in blue monogrammed suits alongside aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, journalist Gayle King, producer Kerianne Flynn, and activist Amanda Nguyen and shared the photos via Instagram, writing, “Happy International Day of Human Space Flight. Forever in awe of the Universe and it’s [sic] alignment.”
Sanchez had told Elle during an interview that she and her fellow passengers were planning to go glam before the flight, saying, “Who would not get glam before the flight?!” She quipped that there would be “lash extensions flying in the capsule.”
Bezos’ fiancée also explained that she doesn’t have to worry about her lashes defying gravity, adding, “Mine are glued on. They’re good,” to which Perry added, “Space is going to finally be glam!”
On the other hand, Bowe explained that she had thoroughly planned her rocket launch look and did a test run on her hair to “make sure” it would be OK, saying, “I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good — took it for a dry run.”
Nguyen chimed in that people need to see them with a full face of makeup, saying, “This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes.” She added, “Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.”
How long will the space trip be?
Although Sanchez is getting an unprecedented pre-wedding gift from her husband-to-be, she and her fellow passengers won’t be gone for nearly that long.
New Shepard missions last just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. However, the NS-31 crew will get above the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of outer space, which lies 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth. The passengers will also get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see our planet against the blackness of space.