A US-based Nigerian, Owolabi Salis, travelled to sub-orbital space in Blue Origin’s NS-33 mission on 29 June, 2025, and made history as the first Nigerian in space.
The mission took him and five others up to 105 kilometres into sub-orbital space, beyond the 100 kilometres (62 miles) Kàrmàn Line, considered the boundary of space.
The other members of the crew are Allie and Carl Kueher, Jim Sitkim, Freddie Rescigno Jr, and Leland Larson.
The mission was planned for June 21, but was scrubbed for June 22, and was postponed again due to bad weather till June 29, 2025.
The cost of the spaceflight was not disclosed, but is estimated to be about two million dollars in all, including insurance and other costs.
All six ‘astronauts’ received a one-week intensive training in Blue Origin’s West Texas Site for the mission before liftoff with New Shepard rocket.
Owolabi Salis was born in Ikorodu, Lagos State, southwest Nigeria. He trained as a chartered accountant and lawyer.
He ventured into politics and was a gubernatorial candidate of Alliance for Democracy political party for Lagos State in the 2019 general election, but lost.
He went into tourism and research on spirituality and its importance to human beings.
He is acclaimed to be the first Nigerian to travel to the North Pole and South Pole in one season and has travelled to 120 countries by 2025.
His primary aim of being to space was not science but, according to him, a spiritual appreciation of the Earth.
He said on attaining weightlessness, “I felt like a soul is leaving the body. We were floating like a bird…
I had to do all the special assignment I went for. It’s more of a spiritual assignment.”
The mission was indeed space tourism.
Nigeria’s National Space Research and Development Agency, NASRDA, on 19 June, 2024, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Space Exploration and Research Agency, SERA, a Delaware, USA, based company with the slogan: “A Space Agency for Everyone” to take a Nigerian to space for free.
The mission is to use Blue Origin. The successful candidate must be 18 years or older, democratically picked and from a country that has never been to space.
Nigeria’s space agency now has to look towards serious orbital space for the advancement of science and national economic development for which it was created in 1999.
