Gopi Thotakura says he is proud after becoming first Indian space tourist
AVIATOR Gopi Thotakura said he is proud to become the first Indian to venture into space as a tourist aboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin's NS-25 mission.
Blue Origin's seventh human flight carrying Thotakura, 30, and five others lifted off from Launch Site One in West Texas on Sunday (19) and landed successfully.
‘India into space,' he was heard saying from the spaceflight in a video posted by Blue Origin on X. He was also seen holding the small Indian flag.
The 30-year-old Andhra Pradesh-born entrepreneur and pilot was also seen holding a banner which read ‘I am an eco-warrior for our sustainable planet'.
He is the first Indian space tourist and the second Indian to venture into space after the Indian Air Force's Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma in 1984.
He is the fifth person of Indian descent ever to go past the line of space after Sharma, NASA astronauts Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, and Sirisha Bandla, an Indian American aeronautical engineer and the vice president of government affairs and research operations for Virgin Galactic, who flew on the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 in July 2021.
Other astronauts on the flight include Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller and former Air Force Captain
Ed Dwight, who was selected by president John F Kennedy in 1961 as the nation's first Black astronaut candidate but never had the opportunity to fly.
Dwight - at 90 years, 8 months and 10 days - became the oldest person to ever go to space.
‘This is a life-changing experience, everybody needs to do this,' he exclaimed after the flight.
‘I thought I didn't really need this in my life,' he added, reflecting on his omission from the astronaut corps, which was his first experience with failure as a young man.
‘But I lied,' he added, with a hearty laugh.
‘You take everything you imagined, you multiply it roughly by 100 and you are still quite far from reality,' crewmate and French entrepreneur Chiron told AFP.
‘I'm not quite back down to Earth yet.' Mission NS-25 is the seventh human flight for Blue Origin, which sees short jaunts on the New Shepard suborbital vehicle as a stepping stone to greater ambitions, including the development of a full-fledged heavy rocket and lunar lander.
Including Sunday's crew, the company has flown 37 people aboard New Shepard - a small, fully reusable rocket system named after Alan
Shepard, the first American in space.
According to Blue Origin, ‘Gopi is a pilot and aviator who learned how to fly before he could drive.'
Thotakura co-founded Preserve Life Corp, a global center for holistic wellness and applied health located near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
In addition to flying jets commercially, he pilots bush, aerobatic, and seaplanes, 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 in Tanzania.
Thotakura is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
During the mission, the crew soared to more than three times the speed of sound. The rocket vaulted the capsule past the Kármán line, an area 100 kilometres above Earth's surface that is widely recognized as the altitude at which outer space begins.
At the peak of the flight, passengers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and striking views of Earth through the cabin windows.
During the flight, each astronaut carried a postcard to space on behalf of Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future.