Indian pilot becomes first to fly as tourist to space on Blue Origin’s return flight

The New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off at 9:36 am (local time) from Blue Origin’s facilities on a private ranch in West Texas, CNN reported.

A Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin flight, carrying six crew, including a veteran Indian pilot, Captain Gopichand Thotakura, took off into the edge of space on May 19, nearly two years after the company's uncrewed test flight ended in a failure.

The New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off at 9:36 am (local time) from Blue Origin’s facilities on a private ranch in West Texas, CNN reported. A livestream of the mission, called NS-25, began at about 8:12 am (local time) on the Blue Origin website.

The six crew aboard the capsule are - Captain Thotakura from Andhra Pradesh's Vijayawada, venture capitalist Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc, software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L Hess, retired accountant Carol Schaller and Ed Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain who was selected by then US President John F Kennedy in 1961 to become the country's first Black astronaut candidate.