Blue Origin To Launch First All-Female Crew Aboard Its Spacecraft

An all-female crew is about to be space-bound aboard an upcoming Blue Origin suborbital flight. The team will be led by Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, who is a television host-turned-helicopter pilot.
 
Sanchez broke the news to WSJ. Magazine, where she stated that the team would be made up of six women making their mark on the world. Who those lucky six will be has yet to be revealed.

Last year, the space team sent the first Mexican woman into a suborbital flight.
 
The mission is proposed to take place on Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle sometime early next year if everything goes well. These flights are generally only 11 minutes long from takeoff to touchdown. The craft lifts its passengers high enough for those on board to experience the overview effect, where one’s perception changes after viewing Earth from a new perspective.
 
New Shepard consists of a first-stage booster and a crew capsule. It was first flown in 2021 with Bezos, his brother Mark, and aviation veteran Wally Funk aboard.
 
The last New Shepard payload-only vehicle that took off on a mission last September ran into a failure during an autonomous research mission which led to the loss of its booster. Thankfully, its escape system kicked in and landed the aircraft with its parachutes. Since then, New Shepard has not flown with or without a crew. 

[via Space.com and TechTimes, cover image via Blue Origin]