Blue Origin set to launch all-female spaceflight with Katy Perry on April 14

Watch Live! Blue Origin's star-studded launch with Katy Perry and Gayle King - YouTube

Blue Origin will launch an all-female spaceflight with Katy Perry on Monday morning (April 14), and you can watch the historic action live.

Perry and her crewmates — Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Kerianne Flynn and Lauren Sánchez (who's the partner of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos) — are set to launch to suborbital space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle from the company's West Texas site on Monday.

The launch window opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT; 8:30 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of Blue Origin, or directly via the company. Coverage will begin 90 minutes before liftoff.

grid showing headshots of six women, along with their names: aisha bowe, kerianne flynn, gayle king, amanda nguyen, katy perry and lauren sanchez — The NS-31 crew. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

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.

Perry and her colleagues won't be gone for nearly that long; New Shepard missions last just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. But 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. They'll also get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see our planet against the blackness of space.

— Blue Origin faces backlash ahead of historic all-female spaceflight with Katy Perry

— Facts about New Shepard, Blue Origin's rocket for space tourism

We don't know how much this experience costs; Blue Origin has not published its ticket prices. But its main competitor in the suborbital space tourism business, Virgin Galactic, currently charges $650,000 per seat.

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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