Katy Perry, Gayle King and 4 other women are headed for the ‘edge of space.’ Here’s what that means

A group of well-known women, including pop star Katy Perry and media icon Gayle King, are getting ready for an extraordinary journey to the "edge of space." This mission, organized by Virgin Galactic, is part of an initiative to promote diversity in space travel and inspire future generations of female explorers.
However, what exactly is involved in traveling to the "edge of space"? Here’s a breakdown of what these women will experience—and why this mission is so groundbreaking.

1. What Is the ‘Edge of Space’?
Virgin Galactic flights, in contrast to SpaceX and NASA's traditional orbital spaceflights, reach the "edge of space," or about 50-55 miles (80-88 kilometers) above Earth. Not quite orbit: This is below the Kármán line (62 miles/100 km), the internationally recognized boundary of space, but high enough to experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth.
Suborbital flight: The Virgin Galactic VSS Unity spacecraft ascends to its highest point and glides back down, providing a brief state of weightlessness. 2. Who Will Go? The mission, called "Galactic 07," will feature an all-women crew, including:
Superstar and singer Katy Perry Gayle King, co-host of CBS Mornings Two astronauts (likely Virgin Galactic crew members)
Two undisclosed passengers (possibly scientists or philanthropists)
This flight highlights the growing role of private space tourism and efforts to make space more accessible to women.
3. What Will They Experience?
A smooth ascent: The spacecraft is carried by a mothership (VMS Eve) before rocket ignition propels it upward.
Stunning views: Passengers will see the blackness of space and Earth’s thin blue atmosphere.
Weightlessness: For about 3-4 minutes, they’ll float freely inside the cabin.
G-forces on re-entry: A brief but intense sensation as the craft descends.
4. What is the significance of this mission? Diversity in space: Despite this mission's efforts to change the narrative, women are still underrepresented in space flight. Influence from celebrities: Well-known people like Perry and King can get more people interested in space exploration. The future of space tourism: As costs fall, more civilians may be able to see space. Last Thoughts While this isn’t a deep-space mission, flying to the edge of space is still a once-in-a-lifetime experience—one that could pave the way for more inclusive and accessible space travel. If you had the chance, would you travel to the edge of space?

What makes an astronaut
Perhaps the most well-known and controversial demarcation of space, the Kármán line lies at 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level.

Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard flights travel just past that altitude.

But the company’s chief competitor, Virgin Galactic, does not. Its flights so far have reached up to about 88.5 kilometers (55 miles), which is still beyond the 81-kilometer (50-mile) mark that the US government has long used to define space.

Still, Blue Origin has pointed to the Kármán line to assert its rides as a more legitimate path to earning “astronaut” status, saying in one 2021 social media post that “none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name” — a subtle dig at Virgin Galactic.

Defining an astronaut, however, is almost a different matter entirely. In the early days of spaceflight, the US government established the 81-kilometer (50-mile) definition as a basis for awarding astronaut badges to military and NASA pilots.

where you feel weightless However, the public's conception of an astronaut frequently conjures up images of a person floating in weightlessness and being surrounded by the pitch-black expanse of the cosmos. But experiencing weightlessness has little to do with altitude — at least, not at the relatively low ones that Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic fly.
At apogee, the spaceflight term for the very top of a flight path, the Blue Origin capsule will still be subjected to the pull of Earth's gravitational pull. However, the astronauts will be weightless because Earth's gravity will cancel out the energy that the rocket and capsule generated after liftoff, giving them a sensation similar to that of reaching the top of a big roller coaster hill for a few minutes. In contrast, astronauts on the International Space Station remain weightless for months at a time because they are in orbit around Earth — which requires far faster speeds than New Shepard’s suborbital flights travel.
Recordkeepers, however, have not stipulated that a person must travel to orbit to be deemed an astronaut.
For instance, astronaut wings were given to civilian and military pilots who piloted X-15 aircraft to altitudes greater than 50 miles (81 kilometers) during a 1960s test campaign. The science of defining space
The US government uses the 81-kilometer (50-mile) mark to define space for many of the same reasons that other organizations use the Kármán line. It's possible that the latter calculates the phenomenon differently. One of the first people to attempt to describe the altitude at which aeronautics becomes astronautics was Hungarian-American engineer and physicist Theodore von Kármán, cofounder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Von Kármán was also an engineer and physicist. However, even Kármán's initial efforts in the 1950s were inaccurate. According to a 2014 study on the definition of space, "the atmosphere is indeed dynamic and fluctuates in density which makes any delimitation imprecise." So, “the Kármán line fluctuates between” 84 kilometers (52 miles) and 100 kilometers (62 miles).