New Delhi:
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will become the second Indian to travel to space, four decades after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma’s historic feat in 1984. Mr Shukla, a serving officer in the Indian Air Force (IAF), will pilot the Axiom 4 (Ax-4), a private space mission that will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft this year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
But the Sharma-Shukla parallel does not end there.
Group Captain Shukla’s selection for Ax-4 comes through the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which identified him as a key astronaut for India’s upcoming Gaganyaan mission. ISRO has collaborated with NASA and Axiom Space for this mission.
As part of Ax-4, Mr Shukla will serve as the mission’s pilot alongside three other astronauts: Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut and mission commander, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland, and Tibor Kapu from Hungary.
Ahead of the mission, Axiom released the ‘space patch’ which will feature on the astronauts’ space suits. The Ax-4 patch has four ascending lines, each representing a flag of the countries whose astronauts are part of the mission.
The patch is divided into three sections, symbolising three continents working together. Seven stars represent the seven continents.
This mission will not only mark the first time an ISRO astronaut has reached the ISS but will also be a landmark event for Poland and Hungary, whose astronauts will be making their first visits to the space station.
“I am really excited to go into microgravity and experience space flight on my own. The tempo for the mission has been building up each month. I think we are at a stage wherein all the pieces are kind of coming together. I’m extremely excited to see how this unfolds in the coming months and for the actual space flight as well,” Group Captain Shukla told NDTV.
Axiom Space has been steadily expanding its private astronaut missions to the ISS since its first mission, Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), in April 2022. That mission saw a four-member private crew spend 17 days aboard the orbiting laboratory.
Ax-2 followed in May 2023, led by Peggy Whitson, the same commander for Ax-4. That mission lasted eight days in orbit. The most recent, Ax-3, launched in January 2024 and saw its crew spend 18 days docked to the ISS.