Indian created history by travelling in space!!!

Gopi Thotakura, born in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, has created history by participating in Blue Origin's New Shepard-25 (NS-25) mission. He has become the first indian space tourist and the second indian to go to space. Indian-origin pilot Gopi Thotakura, living in America, was one of the six space tourists who took a short walk in space on sunday (May 19). Even though Gopi is the first indian space tourist, to date more than 50 people have done such space travel. With this mission, Blue Origin has so far completed a total of seven manned space flights and 25 flights for the New Shepard program. This is a big achievement for New Shepard which has so far sent 37 people into space.

Indians who travelled to space

Before Gopi Thotakura, Wing commander Rakesh Sharma was the only indian citizen to travel to space. On 3 april 1984, Sharma flew into space as a professional astronaut in Soyuz T-11 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos programme. Apart from Rakesh Sharma, Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams, raja Chari and sirisha Bandla are astronauts of indian origin, but all of them are American citizens.

What is a sub-orbital trip?

Gopi Thotakura flew in a spacecraft of Blue Origin, one of several private space companies that offer short adventures to people interested in going to space. These journeys are sub-orbital.

Suppose you throw a ball upwards. The ball goes up, remains in the air for some time and then comes back down. The sub-orbital trip is also similar. In this, the spacecraft goes out of the Earth's atmosphere but is unable to gain enough speed to take one revolution around the Earth. The spacecraft remains in space for some time, where passengers can experience weightlessness and see the Earth from above, and then the spacecraft returns to Earth. This entire space journey of Gop Thotakura took only ten minutes from take-off to landing. During this time the spacecraft reached a maximum height of about 105 kilometers from the Earth. This was one of the shortest and fastest journeys into space.

The journey into space starts at an altitude of about 100 kilometres from the Earth, which is called the Karman line. This line is considered the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space. Anything flying below this line is called an aeroplane, while anything crossing this line is called a spacecraft.