Indian astronaut Shukla's spaceflight pushed from May 29 to June 8

Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla will have to wait at least until June 8th to blast off to space due to a postponement of the American Axiom-4 private mission that was originally meant for launch on May 29th. 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 almostlmost $64 million (Rs. 550 cr) for Shukla's training and spaceflight as part of Axiom-4.

"After reviewing the International Space Station flight schedule, NASA and its partners are shifting launch opportunities for several upcoming missions. The schedule adjustments provide more time to finalise mission plans, spacecraft readiness, and logistics. The new targeted no-earlier-than-launch opportunities, pending operational readiness, are: Axiom-4 Mission 4: 9:11 a.m. EDT, Sunday, June 8th," announced NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate, which enables sustained human exploration missions & operations in low Earth orbit.

As per the present launch timeline, Shukla will blast off to space on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:41pm 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 Apollo 11. 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 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

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 nestled in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which sits atop the Falcon 9 rocket. 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 Organisation) 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.

How will Axiom-4 help India's Gaganyaan Human Spaceflight programme?

Gaganyaan is India's attempt at launching its astronauts to space and returning them safely, using an indigenously developed rocket, spacecraft, and supporting technologies. Gaganyaan was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018, and it is the first step in a series of sustained human spaceflight missions that the Indian Space Agency ISRO wants to carry out in a phased manner. By the end of this decade, India hopes to put an uncrewed space station in Earth orbit. By 2035, it would be used as a crewed Indian outpost that's circling the earth. By 2040, India is targeting a crewed moon landing, a feat that only America accomplished back in 1969, and China hopes to accomplish by the end of this decade.

Gaganyaan would be carried out by the Indian Space Agency ISRO, with test pilots of the Indian Air Force serving as the crew members. The four candidates – Group Captains Prashant Balakrishnan Nair, Shubhanshu Shukla, Ajit Krishnan, and Angad Pratap had completed their training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, Moscow, in 2021. Since then, they have also undergone several theoretical and practical sessions at ISRO's Human Spaceflight Centre and the Indian Air Force's Institute of Aerospace Medicine. They have also been visiting various ISRO centres, such as ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram and Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. WION had exclusively reported that, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and Group Captain Prashant Balakrishnan Nair have been training at facilities in the US, Europe, and Japan, in preparation for Axiom-4. For Axiom-4, the primary Indian candidate is Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and Group Captain Ajit Krishnan is the backup candidate.

The Axiom-4 mission is meant to serve as a precursor to India's Gaganyaan, as Shukla's spaceflight would help India gain contemporary spaceflight experience, valuable technological and experiential insights. While serving as ISRO Chief, Dr. S. Somanath had explained to WION that human spaceflight is a highly challenging endeavour and that India only had the limited experience of Rakesh Sharma's flight in 1984.
He had added that the Indian astronaut(Shukla) flying to the International space station would immensely benefit the Gaganyaan programme. Notably, the maiden spaceflight by an Indian was on a Soviet-era Soyuz T-11 spacecraft, and since then the technologies have changed drastically. Presently, in America, SpaceX is the lone entity that has a track record of reliably ferrying astronauts to the space station on their Crew Dragon craft, while Boeing faces technical troubles with their Starliner craft.