Singer-songwriter Katy Perry and broadcast journalist and co-host of CBS Mornings Gayle King have signed on for the next Blue Origin space flight. The upcoming flight will launch this spring and send an all-female crew into space. The crew will also include former NASA engineer Aisha Bowe, research scientist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez, helicopter pilot and fiancée of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.
At first glance, it might not seem noteworthy that celebrities and scientists are taking the eleven-minute flight past the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space. After all, ten other crewed flights have already made the trip with Blue Origin. (Blue Origin’s spacecraft is fully automated and does not require a pilot on board, so the crew consists of civilians who don’t need any knowledge of space travel).
What sets this launch apart is that it will mark the first time in 62 years that women have traveled to space without a man on board. The last time this happened was in 1963 when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Flying solo, she technically made up the first—and until now, the only—all-female crew to leave Earth.
At that time, women who aimed for space travel were deliberately shut out. As a result, it took 19 years following Tereshkova’s historic flight before another Soviet woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, ventured into space in 1982. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983.
It wasn’t a lack of interest that kept American women out of space for so long. In 1959-60, American women took part in a privately funded research program to determine if women were physically suited for space travel. Thirteen women, who became known as the “The Mercury 13,” successfully passed the same physiological screening tests as the male astronauts selected for Project Mercury. This refuted any arguments that women couldn’t physically handle space travel.
In 1962, three women, including two members of the Mercury 13, testified before Congress about recruiting women to travel in space. All three women were experienced pilots, and one held both the transcontinental speed and altitude flying records at the time. At the same hearing, a group of male astronauts testified, questioning whether women were suitable for the space program.
Famed astronaut John Glenn told Congress why he believed astronauts should be men, explaining, “I think this gets back to the way our social order is organized, really. It is just a fact. The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and, build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.”
Although one Congressman, James Fulton from Pennsylvania, advocated for sending a woman to the moon, the overarching sentiment was against promoting women’s opportunities in space. “I would disagree with Mr. Fulton that we should establish a national goal at this point to land a woman on the moon, which would be to the detriment of our program, which I think the criteria for have been excellent,” explained Joe Waggoner Jr., a Congressmen from Louisiana.
Despite women expressing interest and advocating to be part of the space program earlier in that very session, Waggoner added, “I do not think the women of America want to do all the things that the Russian women have to do, in the first place, nor do I believe that we Americans should do something simply because the Russians do it.”
Unfortunately, the barriers women faced in the 1960s didn’t wholly disappear when women finally reached space. Women pursuing advanced degrees in some STEM fields can still feel like outsiders.
Just last November, aerospace engineer and TV science host Emily Calandrelli, known as “Space Gal,” became the 100th woman in space after her flight with Blue Origin. Reaction to her flight showed the negative attitudes that still persist. A video of her flight received so many offensive, misogynistic comments that Blue Origin took down its original video and replaced it with an edited one. Some of the comments dismissed her accomplishments, while others sexualized her and focused on her appearance.
That lingering bias, along with decades of exclusion, helps explain why no multi-person spaceflight has ever featured an all-female crew—a gap this upcoming flight will finally close. Another milestone will come in 2026 when NASA aims to land the first woman on the moon. The more women who travel to space, the more normalized it becomes. And when young girls see women making these journeys, it helps them picture themselves doing the same.