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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Edward Helmore in New York and Robin McKie

Lauren Sanchez’s all-female space flight is about to blast off – and will challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX

The Blue Origin all-female crew. Clockwise : Lauren Sanchez, Amanda Nguyuen, Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe and Kerrianne Flynn.
The Blue Origin all-female crew. Clockwise : Lauren Sanchez, Amanda Nguyuen, Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe and Kerrianne Flynn. Photograph: Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos is blasting his bride-to-be Lauren Sánchez and her “guests” to space on Monday – a plan that might, under other circumstances, contain mixed messages.

A crew of six women – Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights activist who will become the first Vietnamese woman to fly to space; the CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King; the pop star Katy Perry; film producer Kerianne Flynn; entrepreneur and former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe; and Sánchez, a journalist and philanthropist – will blast off on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket from the company’s launch site, 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas, on an 11-minute, suborbital flight to the edge of space and back.

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