Bezos girlfriend to lead history-making all-female space crew

A helicopter pilot and former TV presenter is preparing to lead the first all-female crew into space.

Lauren Sanchez, 54, the girlfriend of Jeff Bezos, will head a team of five other women whose identities have yet to be revealed for the mission due early next year with Blue Origin.

‘‘It’s going to be women who are making a difference in the world and who are impactful and have a message to send,’’ Sanchez told The Wall Street Journal.

Bezos, 59, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder and the world’s third-richest man, will not be joining the history-making mission. Sanchez said. ‘‘As much as he wants to go on this flight, I’m going to have to hold him back. He’ll be cheering us all on from the sidelines.’’

In her first solo interview since she and Bezos made their relationship public in 2019 after the National Enquirer threatened to reveal the affair, Sanchez said that her ambitions to fly were initially thwarted.

At 18 she left Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she was born in the same hospital as Bezos, for Los Angeles to become a flight attendant. ‘‘Back then, they weighed you, and I weighed 121 lb,’’ she said of the assessment at Southwest Airlines that she failed in 1989. ‘‘They said, ‘You need to be 115’.’’

Eventually, after becoming a cohost on a local TV morning news programme, she signed up for lessons in 2011 at a Los Angeles flight school.

She went on to found, 2017, Black Ops Aviation, one of the first femaleowned aerial film and production companies.

Asked what motivated her to start the company, she said: ‘‘Because there were no females doing it! Less than 9% of pilots are women. That’s it! Of that percentage, even less are helicopter pilots.’’

Her relationship with Bezos blossomed during helicopter flights on which she was the pilot. ‘‘This is one of the only places I feel entirely in control,’’ she said.

Bezos founded Blue Origin, which provides manufacturing and spaceflight services, in 2000, and was on its first crewed mission in July last year.

He was in a helicopter crash in 2003 and gives Sanchez the credit for making him feel comfortable in the air again. He is now training for his own pilot’s licence.

She said that she was ‘‘superexcited’’ about the forthcoming space flight. ‘‘And a little nervous. I’ve wanted to be in the rocket from the jump, so [Bezos] is excited to make this happen with all of these women.’’