The Space Exploration and Research Agency (Sera) has included an Indian in an upcoming suborbital manned spaceflight as part of a programme designed to increase interest in space activities.
This will be the second time that an Indian citizen will fly to space and will also be the second time that an Indian-origin individual will travel on a Blue Origin mission.
Registrations for the mission opened on Monday. Sera, a US agency, said in a statement that any individual with proof of Indian citizenship can apply to be chosen to fly aboard a Blue Origin space tourism mission for a fee of $2.5 (~ ₹200). Six astronauts from various participating nations will fly on Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard rocket.
The timeline for the launch of the mission is not clear, although it is expected to take off for a suborbital spaceflight before September.
Individuals who register will get to put up their own astronaut page and will be needed to seek out public votes. The final candidate will be the individual who gets the most number of public votes, and will be flown to Blue Origin’s Texas base for a three-day training period prior to taking off.
Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is a commercial space firm that specializes in building reusable rockets akin to Elon Musk’s SpaceX—in a bid to make space travel more affordable. The ongoing crop of missions seeks to establish commercial space tourism and also carry scientific payloads for ancillary experiments.
Suborbital flight
The spaceflight in question is suborbital, which suggests that the New Shepard launcher will not attain escape velocity to go beyond earth’s gravitational forces. However, Blue Origin and Sera advertise that the mission will go past 100 km above the earth’s surface, surpassing the Karman line—the globally accepted threshold between the earth’s atmosphere and outer space. The entire duration of the spaceflight will be 11 minutes.
The chosen candidate will become only the second Indian citizen to fly to space, four decades after squadron leader Rakesh Sharma flew into orbital space aboard the erstwhile Soviet Union’s Soyuz-T11 mission. However, the Blue Origin mission will be suborbital, keeping Sharma the only Indian citizen to cross into outer space.
Sharma and six Indian-origin individuals have flown to space, including on suborbital spaceflights. Notable names include Indian-origin astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who became the first native-born woman in space aboard the International Space Station. Chawla died during US launcher Columbia’s ill-fated 2003 mission, which ended with the lander disintegrating during its reentry into earth’s atmosphere.
The latest India-origin individuals to travel to suborbital space include Vijayawada-born Overseas Citizen of India Gopichand Thotakura, who flew aboard Blue Origin’s penultimate NS-25 mission on 19 May. On 8 June, US-born Andy Sadhwani, who works as a propulsion engineer for SpaceX, flew aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity suborbital spacecraft.
New-age services such as those of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic seek to showcase space as a commercial avenue, and also collect ample data to streamline longer human spaceflight endeavours in the future.
Joshua Skurla, cofounder of Sera, said in a statement that the manned missions seek to “make space accessible for everyone”, “foster international collaboration” and “enable citizens from countries with limited access to space to participate in research.”
India is developing its own human spaceflight programme under Gaganyaan, through the central space agency, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). Last week, Isro chairman S Somanath said in New Delhi that Gaganyaan’s first unmanned trial mission will take off by the end of this year, with 2040 earmarked to land the first Indian citizen on the moon.
Isro has selected four astronauts who would travel to orbital space aboard Gaganyaan prior to an attempted crewed moon mission. India is in the process of building its own space station, for which Isro will launch the first module by 2028.
Bill Nelson, administrator of US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said last month that the US, which is the biggest benefactor of space exploration programmes, will collaborate with India towards making the space station.