CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Houston-based firm Axiom House is about to launch the primary Indian astronaut to orbit since 1984.
Group Captain (IAF) Shubhanshu Shukla will function pilot for the Ax-4 mission, which is scheduled to launch towards the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday morning (June 11) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
Ax-4 will carry off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the eyes of extra than simply the nation of India following it to house.
The four-person Ax-4 can be commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who’s now Axiom’s director of human spaceflight. The opposite crewmates are Shukla and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu, who hail from Poland and Hungary, respectively.
The quartet will spend about 14 days conducting analysis and expertise demonstrations aboard the ISS, with the purpose of finishing over 60 experiments with contributions from greater than 30 international locations — a report quantity for an Axiom mission. It will likely be the primary time in house for Shukla, Uznański-Wiśniewski and Kapu, and the primary time representatives from every of their international locations flies a mission to the ISS.
Poland, Hungary and India have all had astronauts fly to house earlier than, however have by no means despatched anybody to the ISS. Of the three international locations, nevertheless, solely India is at the moment within the midst of growing and testing its personal crew-capable spacecraft, Gaganyaan, which is scheduled to launch astronauts for the primary time in 2027. Final yr, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) introduced that Shukla can be one of the four astronauts to fly that inaugural crewed mission.
Ax-4 will mark Shukla’s first spaceflight, and the primary orbital human spaceflight for an Indian citizen since 1984. That earlier honor fell to Rakesh Sharma, the one different individual from the nation to have reached house thus far. He did in order part of the Soviet Interkosmos house program’s Soyuz T-11 mission to the Salyut 7 house station. The identical program can be accountable for launching the first Polish citizen to space in 1978, and the first Hungarian astronaut in 1980.
“I grew up studying about [Sharma] in textbooks and listening to his tales from house. I used to be deeply, deeply impressed by him,” Shukla advised reporters throughout a press convention in January. “The considered turning into an astronaut myself by no means actually took root, as a result of India didn’t have an lively human spaceflight program again then,” he stated.
Now, he hopes his mission can encourage a brand new era of Indian astronauts. “I actually imagine that regardless that I, as a person, am touring to house, that is the journey of 1.4 billion individuals,” he stated.
Even with house in his periphery throughout childhood, Shukla’s profession path nonetheless took him to the skies. He was accepted into the Indian Air Drive (IAF) fighter wing in 2006, the place he gained expertise as a fight chief and check pilot, and was promoted to the rank of group captain in 2024.
Shukla’s Ax-4 crewmates are additionally very achieved of their fields. Whitson holds the report for many cumulative time spent in house by an American (675 days), and has flown to house 4 occasions previous to this mission. Uznański-Wiśniewski used to function chief engineer for the Giant Hadron Collider in Switzerland, earlier than turning into a member of the European Space Agency‘s Astronaut Reserve Class of 2022. And Kapu has a grasp’s diploma in mechanical engineering with a specialty in polymer expertise. He was chosen by the Hungarian to Orbit astronaut program in 2023.
Ax-4 is scheduled to carry off from from KSC’s Launch Complicated-39A (LC-39A) on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT). The crew will spend a few day aboard their SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft catching as much as the ISS for rendezvous and docking, which is scheduled for Thursday morning (June 12).
Dragon will stay docked to the ISS for about two weeks, because the crew completes the mission’s science and outreach objectives. After departing the house station someday over the last week of June, Ax-4 will parachute again to Earth for a splashdown off the US’ West Coast.