An out of the world video call: From space, Astronaut Shukla to address Indian students

As he and fellow crew members aboard the International Space Station circle the Earth at nearly 28,000 kmph, Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will be having a video interaction with students from India. "Our astronaut will be directly interacting with the student community... two such events we are planning across the country," Sudeesh Balan, Project Director at ISRO told WION's Sidharth M.P.

If all goes per plan, the American Axiom-4 mission piloted by Indian Air Force Test Pilot Group Captain Shukla will liftoff on June 8th from Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. However, the launch date is subject to changes in weather and other technical factors. Axiom-4 will carry a crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station, where they would stay for two weeks and perform 60 experiments. The astronauts would be flying on the SpaceX Falcon9 rocket and the Crew Dragon capsule.

Axiom-4 is a unique and exciting opportunity for ISRO in International cooperation and collaboration. The experience and know-how from this mission are significant for us and would feed into Gaganyaan program, which is India's own mission to send our astronauts to space and return them safely. Missions like Axiom-4 would motivate young minds to be passionate about space technology, Balan added.

Further, Shukla will also be performing experiments in STEM(Science, Tech, Engineering, Math), and these will be made available as recorded educational videos, as part of the Axiom-4 mission outreach activity.

Dana Weigel, Manager, International Space Station Program, NASA, told WION's Sidharth M.P, that NASA and ISRO have a unique joint agreement for working onboard together during this mission. "This is a little different than other missions and we'll be having an ISRO member to do joint research. These are Human research programme experiments with NASA. These experiments will be different from the seven biological experiments that Shukla will be doing for ISRO," she added.

About the Axiom-4 astronaut mission

This mission will facilitate the return to human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary, given that each nation’s first and only government-sponsored spaceflight had taken place more than 40 years ago. The Ax-4 crew members will represent their nations in Low Earth Orbit and perform scientific experiments and demonstrations that are of high national importance.

Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, will command the Axiom-4 mission, while ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla will serve as pilot. The two mission specialists are ESA (European Space Agency) project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will be the first Indian to fly to the International Space Station, and the second Indian to fly to space after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, who flew on a Soviet Mission in 1984. The Indian Government has paid almost $64mn(Rs.550cr) for Shukla's training and spaceflight as part of Axiom-4.

As per the present launch timeline, Shukla will blastoff to space on the SpaceX Falcon9 rocket at 6:41 pm Indian time, Sunday, 8th June. The launch will be carried out from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. This launch pad was built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rocket that was used in the Apollo series of missions, including the maiden moon landing by Apollo11. Further, this launchpad has been used for multiple launches of the space shuttle. Since 2019, this site has been leased to SpaceX, which launches its Falcon9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.