Gopi Thotakura, an entrepreneur and a pilot, on Sunday became the first Indian to venture into space as a tourist aboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin’s NS-25 mission.
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West Texas
Gopi Thotakura, the Indian-origin entrepreneur and pilot, took to the skies and beyond in Blue Origin’s seventh human flight, NS-25. According to Blue Origin, “Gopi is a pilot and aviator who learned how to fly before he could drive.” The 30-year-old aviator, 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, 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 Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Born in Andhra Pradesh, Thotakura graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
“Our astronaut crew included: Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, Gopi Thotakura, 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,” the company said in a statement. The crew included the first U.S. Black astronaut candidate from the 1960s. “I am ecstatic,” Ed Dwight, who at age 90 years and eight months became the oldest person in space, said upon landing.
Thotakura 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 Sunday morning, the company announced on social media. To date, Blue Origin has flown 31 individuals aboard New Shepard, a compact, fully reusable rocket system named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
Mission NS-25 marks the seventh human flight for the venture founded by Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos. Bezos envisions short excursions aboard the New Shepard suborbital craft as a precursor to larger aspirations, such as developing a heavy rocket and lunar lander.
