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Indian-American investor to board Blue Origin’s space flight
Bahal, originally from Agra, India, is known for his wide-ranging travels and high-risk adventures
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Malvika Choudhary - Tue, 22, Jul 2025
- 15:46 EDT
- 84
Arvi Singh Bahal / Blue origin
Blue Origin's forthcoming NS-34 suborbital spaceflight will feature six crew members, including Indian-American real estate investor Arvi Singh Bahal.
The flight will be the 14th human mission for the company’s New Shepard program and its 34th overall.
Also Read: NASA-ISRO satellite set for July 30 launch
Bahal, originally from Agra, India, is a naturalized U.S. citizen known for his wide-ranging travels and high-risk adventures. A former cadet at India’s National Defence Academy, he moved to the U.S. in the 1970s after a serious head injury ended his military aspirations.
Over the decades, he built a career spanning the garment industry, international trade, and real estate investing in Florida and Massachusetts, where he currently resides.
The 80-year-old has traveled to nearly every country in the world and visited both the North and South Poles. He has skydived over Mount Everest and the Pyramids of Giza, holds a private pilot's license, and flies helicopters. With his upcoming flight aboard New Shepard, he is set to add outer space to a long list of extreme destinations.
The NS-34 mission will launch from Blue Origin’s facility in West Texas. The exact flight date has not been announced, but a live webcast will begin 30 minutes before liftoff on launch day.
Joining Bahal on the mission are Turkish businessman Gökhan Erdem, Puerto Rican meteorologist Deborah Martorell, British humanitarian Lionel Pitchford, American entrepreneur J.D. Russell—who is making his second flight—and crypto entrepreneur and Grenadian diplomat Justin Sun. Sun originally won the first auctioned seat on a Blue Origin spaceflight in 2021 with a $28 million bid.
That amount was donated to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, and distributed among 19 organizations to promote science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) education.
In May 2024, Indian-origin pilot Gopi Thotakura flew on NS-25. The New Shepard program, operated by Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin, has carried more than 70 people beyond the Kármán line—the internationally recognized boundary of space—since its first crewed mission in 2021.
The upcoming NS-34 mission is expected to follow the same flight profile: a vertical launch, brief period of weightlessness in space, and parachute-assisted return to Earth. The reusable booster will land autonomously near the launch site.
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