New Delhi: Nearly 41 years after the first Indian, cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, flew to space aboard the Russian Soyuz T-11 spacecraft, another Indian national is preparing for a trip. Shubhanshu Shukla will travel to space on a private spaceflight, built by the US-based Axiom Space, around May this year.
“The launch date has not been finalised yet. But it is likely to happen in May,” an Axiom Space spokesperson told ThePrint. On Wednesday, NASA Space Operations also confirmed the possibility of a May launch.
“Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS), is targeted to launch no earlier than May 2025 from the NASA Kennedy Space Station in Florida,” NASA said in a statement.
Shukla, who rose to the rank of a group captain in the Indian Air Force last year, is also one of the four astronaut-designates for India’s own human spaceflight programme—Gaganyaan.
The Indian mission, which will also be its first attempt at sending humans into space, is expected to take flight by 2026, according to the latest update by the Department of Space.
Who is group captain Shubhanshu Shukla?
In February last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the four astronaut-designates for India’s much-awaited Gaganyaan Mission.
Indian Air Force officers Prasanth B. Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan and Shubhanshu Shukla, who were training discreetly in Russia and Bengaluru, were finally introduced to the world.
Despite their public appearance, the astronauts have remained elusive from the public eye, owing to the sensitivity of the mission and their rigorous training.
However, people who have worked with Shukla—who was selected as the primary crew member for the Axiom-4 mission last year—call him a determined man, deeply interested in various aspects of space.
Professor Aloke Kumar from Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science (IISc), who was Shukla’s mentor there when he was working on his post-graduate thesis, said that Shukla is an astrophotography enthusiast. He has also worked extensively on IISc’s space habitation design.
“Shux (which is the call sign for Shukla) is a crucial member of the BHEEM team—the Bharatiya Extraterrestrial Expandable Modular Habitat. He is extremely passionate about the future of India’s space programme,” Kumar said.
The youngest among the group, 39-year-old Shukla said in a media interaction organised by Axiom Space in January this year that he is keen to take his learnings from the Axiom Mission back to Gaganyaan spaceflight. He also said that he would be carrying some Indian souvenirs to space.
The Axiom mission
Last year, Indian Space Research Organisation’s Human Space Flight Centre had entered into a Space Flight Agreement with the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-identified service provider Axiom Space for its upcoming Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station.
For the latest mission, pilot Shukla will be accompanied by Peggy Whitson of the US—the mission commander—and Poland’s Slawosz Uznanski and Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, the mission specialists.
The space agency said that the Ax-4 mission will “realise the return” to human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary, with each nation’s first government-sponsored flight in more than 40 years.
“While Ax-4 marks these countries’ second human spaceflight mission in history, it will be the first time all three nations will execute a mission on board the International Space Station,” Axiom said in its mission statement.
This means that while Shukla will be the second Indian national to fly into space, he will create history by becoming the first to fly to the ISS.
The Axiom statement added, “This historic mission underscores how Axiom Space is redefining the pathway to low-Earth orbit and elevating national space programmes globally.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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