Katy Perry set to blast off on board Jeff Bezos's all-female space tourism rocket

Katy Perry and five other women are set for lift-off on board Jeff Bezos's space tourism rocket.

The Blue Origin New Shepard rocket will take off in West Texas at 8:30 local time, or 14:30 BST. The pop star will blast off alongside Bezos's fiancée Lauren Sánchez, CBS presenter Gayle King, NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn. The trip will last about 11 minutes and fly over 100km above Earth. This crosses the internationally recognised boundary of space, giving the crew a moment of weightlessness.

"If you had told me that I would be part of the first-ever all-female crew in space, I would have believed you,” wrote Perry in a Facebook post. “Nothing was beyond my imagination as a child. Although we didn't grow up with much, I never stopped looking at the world with hopeful WONDER!"

The rocket is fully autonomous, meaning that it requires no pilots to operate the vehicle. The capsule with the crew will return to Earth with a parachute-assisted landing, and the rocket booster will land about two miles from the launch site.

Blue Origin is a private company founded in 2000 by Bezos, the billionaire behind Amazon. According to the company, the last all-female spaceflight was more than 60 years ago with Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on a solo mission.

The New Shepard passengers are trained for two days with instruction on emergency protocols, procedures for zero gravity and an emphasis on physical fitness. Two support members known as Crew Member Seven are present, with one providing guidance to the crew and the other maintaining communication from the control room.

“I think I’m gonna sing, I’m gonna sing a little bit,” said Perry on Instagram. “I’ve got to sing in space.”