By Mickey Carroll, science and technology reporter
When Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Gayle King, Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe and Kerianne Flynn blast off to space, they’ll be the first all-female space crew in more than 60 years.
Russian engineer Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight to space in 1963 was the first mission to space without a man, and hasn’t been repeated until now.
The women are trying to push people’s expectations of what an astronaut can look like, by also becoming the first space crew to get their hair and make-up done before the flight.
Popstar Katy Perry says they’re trying “to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut”.
“I think it’s so important for people to see us like that,” said Nguyen.
“This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes.”
Although, like many science and technology careers, space travel has always been quite male, women have been crossing the final frontier for decades.
Chemist Helen Sharman became Britain’s first astronaut when she blasted off to the Mir space station in 1991 – she was also the first woman on that space station and the first western European woman in space.
She described having to do her training in an off-the-shelf spacesuit designed for a man as her “greatest discomfort”, worse than spending 15 minutes in the “dreaded spinning chair” that helped the crew get used to conditions in space.
There are currently three other women in space; Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers on the International Space Station, and Wang Haoze on China’s Tiangong space station.