Entrepreneur and pilot, Gopichand Thotakura is aiming for a place in Indian space history

Indian businessman Gopichand Thotakura joins Blue Origin's space flight, aiming to become India's second astronaut.

Earlier this month, Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin announced six crew members who would be part of a forthcoming commercial flight to space. Of interest to India is one participant, Gopichand Thotakura, an Indian businessman and pilot, who is based in the United States.

While an actual launch date has not been specified, a successful trip to space could make Mr. Thotakura the first Indian in space since Rakesh Sharma, who in April 1984 became — and remains — the only Indian to have the honour, when he went aboard the Russian Soyuz T-11 spacecraft.

In a media statement, Mr. Thotakura describes himself as the “first civilian Indian astronaut”. In response to questions from The Hindu, he reasoned that he would be an astronaut because anyone who crosses the Karman Line — the boundary that separates Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, and is at about 80 km above sea level — is considered one.

Given that the New Shepard rocket (NS-25), the Blue Origin vehicle, climbs to a 100 km from the Earth’s surface, stays in space long enough for the crew aboard to experience weightlessness and allows one to observe the Earth’s curvature, it ticks all the boxes for a space trip. Rakesh Sharma, who spent a week in the Russian space station, fits the classical definition of an astronaut, however it is unclear if Mr. Thotakura would be described as one.

Until 2021, these distinctions did not matter because all human spaceflight until then involved military personnel and astronauts who were trained as such and part of missions that involved either living in space or being part of test flights.

The United States’ Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which issues commercial space licences and verifies launch or re-entry vehicles that carry humans, has since 2021 stopped designating spacefarers as “astronauts”.

In 2004, the FAA had launched a “commercial astronaut wings” programme that awarded a $10 million prize to launch a reusable spacecraft that could carry people to the Karman boundary, and return and repeat a launch in two weeks. However those part of NASA’s training programme, irrespective of whether they actually go into space, are designated as astronauts though they are given different categories of astronauts depending on the activities executed.