Tomorrow (October 8) should see entrepreneur Danna Karagussova become the first Kazakh woman to travel into space.

She and five others are to join Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-36 mission. 

Karagussova, who has more than 25 years of experience in media, distribution and event management, is the co-founder of Portals, a project combining digital self-regulation tools with science and art.

Kazakhstan is famed for the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from where the first human to reach space, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, was launched in 1961.

The reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket system is to take Karagussova – as well as American entrepreneur Jeff Elgin, engineer Clint Kelly III, startup founder Aaron Newman, Ukrainian businessman Vitalii Ostrovsky and one participant who has opted to remain anonymous – on an 11-minute journey. The astronauts, after being launched from West Texas, will soar past the Karman line (100 kilometres/62 miles above mean sea level it is a conventional but not universally accepted definition of the edge of space), and experience several minutes of weightlessness, while witnessing views of Earth.

The vehicle is fully autonomous—there are no pilots.

The NS-36 launch will be Blue Origin’s 15th crewed mission. To date, the company’s spacecraft have carried 75 people.

Blue Origin was created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The space crew isolation experiment is the first in Kazakhstan to have an all-women "crew" (Credit: gov.kz).

Kazakhstan, meanwhile, has initiated its first long-term crew isolation experiment simulating space flight that involves an all-women “crew”.

Research project SANA-1 was formally launched at the National Space Centre on October 1, The Times of Central Asia has reported.

The initiative is being carried out by the Aerospace Committee of the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development in partnership with Eurasian Space Ventures and several leading national scientific and educational institutions.

The all-female "crew" of four specialists is drawn from organisations under the Aerospace Committee. They are Yuliya Bakirova, who serves as commander, Assem Kuandyk, Daria Komarova and Linara Zhadygerova. The group will spend 10 days inside a spacecraft simulator built by Eurasian Ventures Group, created at the initiative of cosmonaut and Hero of Kazakhstan Aidyn Aimbetov, according to the ministry’s press service.

During the mission, the team will carry out a range of studies on medical and psychological factors, as well as team dynamics, alongside a set of educational experiments. The scientific programme is led by Alina Gutoreva, a PhD in psychology and head of the AI Lab at the Kazakh-British Technical University.

SANA-1 represents Kazakhstan’s first integrated study combining psychological, medical and engineering aspects of human spaceflight. Officials said the project is intended to strengthen the country’s space research capabilities, inspire younger generations to pursue careers in science and technology, and underscore the role of women in research.

The all-female participation is presented as a milestone for gender equality and a step towards preparing Kazakhstan’s own researchers for future space missions.