New Delhi: Indian Air Force's (IAF's) Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will script history as the first Indian astronaut to travel to the International Space Station (ISS). Grp Capt Shukla is selected as the pilot for Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4). It is a private astronaut mission and will be launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The Ax-4 crew includes members from India, Poland, and Hungary, marking each nation’s first mission to the space station in history and second government-sponsored human spaceflight mission in over 40 years, as per the official website of the mission. It will be launched not before Spring this year, reported The Times Of India.
Who Is Group Captain Shubanshu Shukla?
Shubhanshu Shukla will be India’s second national astronaut to go to space since 1984 after Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma. Grp Capt Shukla is born on October 10, 1985, in Lucknow. He was commissioned into the IAF in June 2006 as a fighter pilot. He was promoted to the rank of Group Captain in March last year.
Grp Capt Shukla has an impressive 2,000 hours of flight experience across various aircraft, including the Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier, and An-32. In 2019, the IAF officer received a call from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for India’s maiden human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, scheduled for launch in 2025. He was sent for training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Moscow, Russia. On February 27, 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled Shukla as one of the elite astronauts undergoing intensive training.
About Axiom 4 Mission:
The Ax-4 mission will “realize the return” to human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary. It will be the first time all three nations will execute a mission on board the International Space Station. This historic mission underscores how Axiom Space is redefining the pathway to low-Earth orbit and elevating national space programs globally, as per the official website.
The other three members of the mission are - Peggy Whitson - the commander of the mission, Sławosz Uznański, the European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut, will be the second Polish astronaut since 1978 and Tibor Kapu - the second national Hungarian astronaut since 1980.
The Ax-4 will be the second commercial spaceflight mission made up of government and ESA-sponsored national astronauts.
