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The all-star crew of New Shepard 31: inspiring future generations in STEM and beyond

07 March 2025

Robert Kelly
Robert Kelly
Senior Associate, Patent Attorney

On Thursday 27 February 2025, Blue Origin announced the crew for New Shepard’s 11th Human Flight. The crew boasts an impressive collection of skills and knowledge ranging from award-winning journalism to rocket science, from bioastronautics to rocking a crowd of 100,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. This announcement is particularly exciting as Saturday 08 March is International Women’s Day: a celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

Crew of the New Shepard 31

The talented six-member crew of the New Shepard 31 (NS-31) flight are Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez. Each of the crew is extremely impressive in their own right, noting that:

  • Bowe is a former NASA rocket scientist, entrepreneur, and global STEM advocate;
  • Nguyen was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize and has performed research for the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, MIT and NASA;
  • King is a journalist excelling in both written and spoken media;
  • Perry is fairly described an international pop superstar alongside being a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador;
  • Flynn is a film producer and advocate for non-profit institutes in New York City; and
  • Sánchez, who is leading the crew, is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and founder in 2017 of Blacks Ops Aviation, the first female-owned and operated aerial film and production company.

One of the goals of the flight is to show young ambitious women that there are no boundaries to what can be achieved. The crew is truly remarkable in terms of the number of areas of human endeavour that have been influenced and mastered during their careers. Indeed, it is arguably the most widely talented crew that has put together for a New Shepard flight.

Beyond the Kármán line

The expedition will take the team past the Kármán line, the widely held “start of space”. The Kármán line is within the region known as the thermosphere and is at an altitude of 100 km (around 62 miles). While Blue Origin was established in 2000, the first crewed NS flight launched on 20 July 2021 and included founder Jeff Bezos, just over twenty years later.

ESA Learning Hub

The rapid advancement of space technology and capability by Blue Origin over 20 years remind us that, with private entities entering and commanding the commercial space business, protecting space-related inventions via intellectual property is extremely important. Noting that a typical patent has a 20-year term, and seeing how far Blue Origin itself has come in that period, we see that a granted patent to a key technology can be extremely valuable for businesses. We have been discussing these ideas in depth in our programme of lectures in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA). These can be found on ESA’s learning hub if they are of interest to the reader. We have provided lectures for the ESA since 2022 and there is a raft of information available to advise how you may best obtain and utilise your IP to achieve your goals. These have been delivered in the context of space technology.

ESA Learning Hub

Careers in space

The above-referenced material may be of interest to those interested in pursuing a career in space. The UK Space Accelerator published an illuminating conversation with Bianca Cefalo in the summer of 2024 (see links below). Cefalo is an aerospace and astronautics engineer alumnus from the University of Naples and offered her thoughts on the challenges Cefalo faced as a woman in a male-dominated industry, on how we can encourage more women to pursue careers in space and detailed her journey into the space industry.

Cefalo highly rates Women in Aerospace, Space4Women and ISACA’s SheLeadsTech (see links below) and we encourage female space enthusiasts to consider engaging with these initiatives and programmes with the aim to bring through more female leaders in space tech.

Related event: Women in IP’s Connected Bubbles

We are committed to improving access into careers in intellectual property and so are delighted to be hosting Women in IP's Connected Bubbles event with IP Inclusive on 26 March 2025 in Southampton. Please do sign up if this event is of interest. Everyone working in the IP profession is welcome, across all roles and all genders.

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