A 30-year-old aviator from Vijayawada, Gopi Thotakura, became the first Indian space tourist on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin’s seventh human flight. Thotakura, an entrepreneur and pilot, joined five other crew members on Blue Origin’s NS-25 mission on Sunday. This makes him the second Indian to venture into space, following Indian Army’s Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma in 1984. The flight, part of Blue Origin’s ‘New Shepard programme,’ launched from West Texas. The New Shepard is a fully reusable sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism. To date, the programme has flown 31 humans above the Karman line, the proposed boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
