India joins citizen astronaut program with SERA and Blue Origin

In a bid to democratise space, US-based Space Exploration and Research Agency (SERA) and Blue Origin on Monday announced India as a partner nation in their human spaceflight programme.

SERA will offer citizens from India a seat on Blue Origin’s future mission of reusable rocket New



Shepard on an 11-minute journey past the Karman line (100 km), the internationally-recognised boundary of space.

Indian citizens will be part of the six seats that together SERA and Blue Origin aim to offer to people from countries that have sent few or no citizen astronauts to space.