Blue Origin Launch: When Will Gayle King and Katy Perry Fly to Space?

WASHINGTON — Gayle King will head to space on Monday morning as part an all-female space crew featuring popstar Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez. 

The “CBS Mornings” co-host and the rest of the crew will take off on Blue Origin’s New Shepard for a 10-minute spaceflight from West Texas. It will be Blue Origin’s 11th human flight. 

Here’s what to know about the spaceflight:

According to the company, the New Shepard launch window is slated to open at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. 

The spaceflight, named NS-31, will lift off from Launch Site One in West Texas. 

Blue Origin will provide a livestream of launch on its website. The company has not shared specific details of when the webcast will start, but live coverage of the launch will start at 8 a.m. ET on Blue Origin’s X page.

CBS will also have coverage of the launch on its network and through Paramount+. The coverage will begin at 7 a.m. ET with “CBS Mornings” and continues with a special coverage on King going to space. 

Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and former TV journalist, picked the all-female crew. Perry, Sanchez and King will be joined by Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist who now heads an engineering firm, research scientist Amanda Nguyen and movie producer Kerianne Flynn.

Blue Origin has flown tourists on short hops to space since 2021, after Bezos climbed aboard with his brother for the inaugural trip; the upcoming trip will be the company’s 11th human spaceflight. Some passengers have received free rides, while others have paid a hefty sum to experience weightlessness. The company declined to comment on who is footing the bill for Monday’s flight.

The news of the upcoming trip has not been without critiques, most recently from actor Olivia Munn, who bemoaned the mission’s cost and publicity. But Perry believes an all-women crew — the first since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight in 1963 — has historic ramifications. Only 14% of people who have gone to space so far have been women.