The NS-31 crew featured: Sánchez, an Emmy-winning journalist and finance of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; pop star Perry; Gayle King, the award-winning CBS News anchor; Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist; Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist; and Kerianne Flynn, a film producer.
Not only was Nguyen the first Vietnamese woman in space, but this was the first all-female space crew since 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian engineer, crewed a solo flight.
Sánchez told Elle magazine she chose the other crew members because they’re all “storytellers in their own right. They’re going to go up to space and be able to spread what they felt in different ways.”
Sánchez asked Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, the creative directors of luxury brand Oscar de la Renta and co-founders of their own brand Monse, to make fashionable spacesuits for the crew, she told The New York Times.
Garcia and Kim partnered with Creative Character Engineering, a Hollywood costume company, to create the Monse Blue Origin suits.
On Sunday, Perry posted an Instagram video showing the capsule, explaining that they dubbed their crew “The Taking Up Space Crew” and promising to sing during the flight.
During the flight, she sang, as she had previously promised, but it was hard to make out what.
King said on the Blue Origin livestream that Perry sang “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong.
“It’s not about me. It’s not about singing my songs,” Perry said of her song choice. “It’s about a collective energy and making space for future women. It’s about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth.”
Meanwhile, Nguyen said on Instagram she would conduct multiple experiments on women’s health and plants during the brief flight.
