If all goes per plan, Indian Air Force fighter pilot and astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla will fly to the International Space Station between May and June this year on an American commercial mission Axiom-4, which will be launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, WION has learned. This comes 41 years after India’s first and only astronaut, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, flew on a Soviet mission to the then Salyut-7 space station. Interestingly, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, who is now known by the Axiom-4 callsign ‘Shuks’, was born in 1985, a year after Rakesh Sharma’s spaceflight.
“Collaboration on Human Spaceflight, including sending an #Indian astronaut to the International #space station in 2024” says @POTUS as he lists out areas of bilateral cooperation between #india & #USA
— Sidharth.M.P (@sdhrthmp) June 23, 2023
Travel to @Space_Station & working there will prep astronauts for Gaganyaan pic.twitter.com/mJfcX4sKdP
The Axiom-4 mission is a result of deepening Indo-US Space cooperation, which came to the fore during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States in June 2023. Back then, President Biden had announced Indo-US collaboration on human spaceflight and the mission to send an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station, marking the highest point in India-US space ties.
Also read: 'I'm coming out': Sunita Williams conducts spacewalk after being stuck in orbit for seven months
Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, will command the two-week-long 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 aastronauts Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
Also read: Maha Kumbh Mela 2025: NASA astronaut shares breathtaking PICS of 'well lit' Kumbh from space station
In July 2024, WION exclusively reported that Indian astronauts would commence their training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Texas, from early August. NASA’s Johnson Center is known as the Hub of Human Spaceflight in the US. Established in 1961, this facility in Houston, Texas, started off as the Manned Spacecraft Centre, the home and Mission Control Center for the US Human Spaceflight programme. In 1973, the facility was renamed in honour of the late President and Texas native Lyndon B Johnson.
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’s orbit. By 2035, it would be used as a crewed Indian outpost circling the earth. By 2040, India is targeting a crewed moon landing, a feat that only America has accomplished in 1969, and China hopes to accomplish by the end of this decade.
Also Read | Watch Live | NASA astronauts Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore step out for first spacewalk together
The Gaganyaan mission 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. For the Axiom-4 mission, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and Group Captain Prashant Balakrishnan Nair have been training in the US, with the former as the primary candidate and the latter as 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, as well as 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 has faced technical troubles with its Starliner craft.
In 2025, India is expected to execute the first of the three uncrewed Gaganyaan missions. After these uncrewed missions and related testing processes are flawlessly accomplished, India hopes to embark on the astronaut-carrying mission, perhaps by 2027.