• Gopi Thotakura, an entrepreneur and a pilot, became the first Indian to venture into space as a tourist aboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin’s New Shepard-25 mission on May 19.

• Gopi was selected as one of the six crew members for the NS-25 mission, making him the first Indian space tourist and the second Indian to venture into space after the Indian Army’s Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma in 1984.

• Blue Origin’s seventh human flight, NS-25, lifted off from Launch Site One in West Texas on May 19.

• This mission was the seventh human flight for the New Shepard programme and the 25th in its history.

New Shepard Programme

• New Shepard is a fully reusable sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism by Blue Origin.

• Named after astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space, New Shepard is Blue Origin’s fully reusable, suborbital rocket system built for human flight from the beginning. 

• During the 11-minute journey, astronauts soar past the Karman line (100 km), the internationally recognised boundary of space, experiencing several minutes of weightlessness and witnessing life-changing views of Earth. The vehicle is fully autonomous—there are no pilots.

• Every astronaut has a window seat in the spacious and pressurized crew capsule. The cabin seats six and is environmentally controlled for comfort.

• Nearly 99 per cent of New Shepard's dry mass is reused, including the booster, capsule, ring fin, engine, landing gear, and parachutes. 

• New Shepard’s BE-3PM engine is fuelled by highly efficient liquid oxygen and hydrogen. During flight, the only byproduct of New Shepard’s engine combustion is water vapor with no carbon emissions.

• The programme has flown 37 humans above the Karman Line.

Who is Gopi Thotakura?

• Andhra Pradesh-born Gopi Thotakura is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

• Gopi, 30, co-founded Preserve Life Corp, a global centre 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, as well as gliders and hot air balloons, and has served as an international medical jet pilot.

• A lifelong traveller, his most recent adventure took him to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

• During the mission, the crew soared to more than three times the speed of sound. The rocket vaulted the capsule past the Karman Line, an area 100 kilometers above Earth’s surface that is widely recognised 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.

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