Ahead of spaceflight, Katy Perry is reading Carl Sagan and channeling her 'feminine divine'

FILE - Katy Perry arrives astatine the 11th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony connected Saturday, April 5, 2025, successful Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

ONTARIO, Calif. (AP) — After a agelong time of rehearsing for her upcoming satellite tour, Katy Perry decided to peruse a fewer books to assistance her unwind earlier bed.

“I was listening to ‘Cosmos’ by Carl Sagan and speechmaking a publication connected drawstring theory,” she recalled. “I’ve ever been funny successful astrophysics and funny successful astronomy and astrology and the stars. We are each made of stardust and we each travel from the stars.”

But the popular superstar was motivated by much than conscionable curiosity. On Monday, she volition articulation Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sanchez, writer Gayle King and 3 different women connected an all-female Blue Origin spaceflight. Perry spoke with The Associated Press astatine her Southern California rehearsal abstraction connected Wednesday, days earlier she was acceptable to permission for grooming successful Texas.

“I americium talking to myself each time and going, ‘You’re brave, you’re bold, you are doing this for the adjacent procreation to animate truthful galore antithetic radical but particularly young girls to go, “I’ll spell to abstraction successful the future.” No limitations,’” she said.

Perry said she has been “psychologically” preparing for the spaceflight by speechmaking enactment from the precocious Sagan and different scientists.

“I’m truly excited astir the engineering of it all. I’m excited to larn much astir STEM and conscionable the mathematics astir what it takes to execute this benignant of thing,” she said.

An all-female spaceflight seems an apt endeavor for the 40-year-old Perry, whose postulation of hits see songs astir extraterrestrials (“E.T.”) and fireworks shooting crossed the entity (“Firework”), arsenic good arsenic feminist anthems similar her 2013 hit, “Roar,” and “WOMAN’S WORLD,” disconnected her astir caller album.

Perry said that whenever she is doing thing caller oregon daunting, she looks inward for spot and confidence.

“Using that feminine divine that I was calved with and decidedly unlocked erstwhile I had my girl adjacent more. It leveled up for sure. Being a parent conscionable makes you level up with that benignant of power,” she said. Her daughter, Daisy, 4, joined Perry earlier her rehearsal.

Bezos’ rocket institution Blue Origin announced the unit successful February. Sanchez, a chopper aviator and erstwhile TV journalist, picked the women who volition articulation her connected a 10-minute spaceflight from West Texas aboard a New Shepard rocket. Perry, Sanchez and King volition beryllium joined by Aisha Bowe, a erstwhile NASA rocket idiosyncratic who present heads an engineering firm, probe idiosyncratic Amanda Nguyen and movie shaper Kerianne Flynn.

“I americium feeling truthful grateful and grounded and honored to beryllium invited and included with this unthinkable radical of women,” Perry said. Whenever she gets tense astir the trip, she reminds herself however important it is.

Blue Origin has flown tourists connected abbreviated hops to abstraction since 2021, aft Bezos climbed aboard with his member for the inaugural trip; the upcoming travel volition beryllium the company's 11th quality spaceflight. Some passengers person received escaped rides, portion others person paid a hefty sum to acquisition weightlessness. The institution declined to remark connected who is footing the measure for Monday's flight.

The quality of the upcoming travel has not been without critiques, astir precocious from histrion Olivia Munn, who bemoaned the mission's outgo and publicity. But Perry believes an all-women unit — the archetypal since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight successful 1963 — has historical ramifications. Only 14% of radical who person gone to abstraction truthful acold person been women.

“It’s an important infinitesimal for the aboriginal of commercialized abstraction question and for humanity successful wide and for women each around,” she said. “I conscionable consciousness like, ‘Put america successful coach.’”

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This communicative has been corrected to study that 14% of radical who person gone to abstraction person been women, not 11%.

April 11, 2025|Updated April 11, 2025 9:06 a.m.