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Jeff Bezos-led space startup Blue Origin this month revealed the six-person crew that will be flying on its NS-25 mission. This crew includes Ed Dwight, who became the first Black astronaut candidate in 1961 when then US president John F. Kennedy selected him to enter training at the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS), even though he never flew to space after that. But the NS-25 mission also includes Gopi Thotakura, who could become the first Indian space tourist in history.
Thotakura is not the first Indian aiming to go to space — Veteran travel documentary producer Santhosh George Kulangara had paid for a seat on a Virgin Galactic space plane to go to the very edge of space. Kulangara underwent multiple training sessions and flights to prepare for the role, but now, it seems like Thotapura could get to space before him.
Now, neither Kulangara nor Thotakura would be the first Indian to go to space. They are a little too late for that because Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian citizen to go to space in 1984 when he flew on the Soviet Soyuz T-11 rocket. Sharma spent more than seven days in the Soviet Union’s Salyut-7 space station.
Gopichand Thotakura is an entrepreneur who Blue Space described as the “pilot and aviator who learned how to fly before he could drive.” He is also the co-founder of Preserve Life Corp, a Georgia-based holistic wellness and applied health center.
“In addition to flying jets commercially, Gopi pilots bush, aerobatic, and seaplanes, as well as gliders and hot air balloons, and has served as an international medical jet pilot. A lifelong traveler, his most recent adventure took him to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro,” said a press release from the Bezos-led space company.
Thotakura’s LinkedIn profile says that he studied at Sarala Birla Academy, a Bengaluru-based private school. He then went on to get a Bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Sciences from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He was born in Vijayawada, according to NDTV.
The Blue Origin NS-25 mission will be the first crewed flight for the fully-reusable New Shepard rocket since NS-22 in 2022. The fleet of rockets was grounded after an engine failure caused a crash during an uncrewed mission in September 2022, and it only resumed flying in December 2023. Apart from Thotakura and Ed Dwight, the mission will carry four other astronauts — Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, and Carol Schaller.
NS-25 will be Blue Origin’s seventh crewed suborbital space flight. During a sub-orbital spaceflight, the spacecraft will reach outer space, but instead of becoming an artificial satellite or gaining enough velocity to escape Earth, it will complete one orbit before reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Blue Origin is yet to confirm the date of the mission.
The New Shepard launch system is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space. The reusable suborbital rocket system is powered by the company’s Blue Engine 3 (BE3) engine, which can throttle down the booster to just eight kilometres per hour to land the reusable section of the rocket.
The six astronauts will be sitting in New Shepard’s pressurised crew capsule where “each astronaut gets their own window seat.” There will be no pilot on the mission because the vehicle is fully autonomous.
