By Asia Samachar | United States |
The first Sikh has just gone to space on a rocket launched by US space technology company Blue Origin Enterprises.
Arvinder Singh Bahal, bearing a light yellow turban, joined five others on board the New Shepard launch vehicle on Aug 3.
The 80-year-old real estate investor who was born in Agra, India, is now a naturalised US citizen.
He has been described as a lifelong traveler and adventurer who has visited every country in the world, the North and South Poles, and skydived Mount Everest and the Pyramids of Giza. He holds a private pilot’s license and also flies helicopters.
The flight, which lasts about 11 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown, heads to a point 62 miles over the Earth. This point, known as the Kármán Line, is an internationally recognized boundary of space.
Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by billionaire Jeff Bezos who also founded Amazon in 1994 and owns the Washington Post newspaper.
How much do you pay for the ride out of space? The rates are not publicly available, but you need to pay a deposit of US$150,000 to begin the order process.
The first Indian citizen to travel into space was Rakesh Sharma aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-11 mission in 1984.
The first Panjabi into space was astronaut and aerospace engineer Kalpana Chawla when she flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator aboard STS-87.
Chawla’s second flight was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia. She was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on February 1, 2003.
Chawla’s family had Punjabi roots. She was born in Karnal, Haryana, India, but her family originally came from Gujranwala in West Punjab, Pakistan. They were Punjabi Hindus who migrated to East Punjab (India) during the Partition of India in 1947.
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