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Pop star Katy Perry and five other women are set to blast into space aboard Jeff Bezos’ space tourism rocket. The singer will be joined by Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS presenter Gayle King. The New Shepard rocket is due to lift off from its West Texas launch site and the launch window opens at 08:30 local time (14:30 BST). The flight will last around 11 minutes and take the crew more than 100km (62 miles) above Earth, crossing the internationally recognised boundary of space and giving the crew a few moments of weightlessness.
Also on board are former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. The spacecraft is fully autonomous, requiring no pilots, and the crew will not manually operate the vehicle. The capsule will return to Earth with a parachute-assisted soft landing, while the rocket booster will land itself around two miles away from the launch site.
Blue Origin is a private space company founded in 2000 by Bezos, the billionaire entrepreneur who also started Amazon. Although Blue Origin has not released full ticket prices, a $150,000 (£114,575.85) deposit is required to reserve a seat—underlining the exclusivity of these early flights. Alongside its suborbital tourism business, the company is also developing long-term space infrastructure, including reusable rockets and lunar landing systems.
The rise of space tourism has prompted criticism that it is too exclusive and environmentally damaging. Supporters argue that private companies are accelerating innovation and making space more accessible. Critics raise significant environmental concerns. They say that as more and more rockets are launched, the risks of harming the ozone layer increases.
A 2022 study by Professor Eloise Marais from University College London found that rocket soot in the upper atmosphere has a warming effect which is 500 times greater than when released by planes closer to Earth. The high cost of space tourism makes it inaccessible to most people, with these expensive missions out of reach for the majority.
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