New Delhi: After a wait spanning 41 years, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla has become the first Indian astronaut to dock at the International Space Station (ISS), marking a historic moment in India's space journey since Rakesh Sharma's 1984 mission.

Shukla, born in Lucknow, reached the orbiting laboratory on Thursday as part of Axiom Space’s Ax-4 mission, which docked to the Harmony module of the ISS at 6:30 am ET (4.00 pm IST). This makes him the second Indian ever in space, and the first to board the ISS.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named ‘Grace’, carried four astronauts: Commander Peggy Whitson (US), Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla (India), and Mission Specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski (Poland) and Tibor Kapu (Hungary). The crew launched earlier on Wednesday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Hello everyone, namaskar from space,” Shukla said via video link. “What a ride it was. The moment the launch began, I was being pushed back into my seat—and then suddenly, silence. I was floating in vacuum.”

“I’m learning like a baby — how to walk, how to eat. It’s just amazing,” he added.

Shukla has also carried with him a taste of home — carrot halwa, moong dal halwa, and mango nectar — to indulge in comfort food during the mission.

ADVERTISEMENT

This mission is more than symbolic. Once aboard the ISS, Shukla will lead pioneering research into space food and nutrition, under a collaboration between ISRO, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), and NASA.

His experiments will focus on sustainable life-support systems and the behaviour of edible microalgae in microgravity. The study will assess growth, gene expression (transcriptomics), protein function (proteomics), and metabolic changes (metabolomics) — critical for long-duration deep-space missions.

The Axiom-4 mission, a commercial effort, also reinforces India’s growing presence in space exploration and its ability to collaborate in global high-tech missions.
(With IANS inputs)

ADVERTISEMENT

TAGS

The comments posted here/below/in the given space are not on behalf of Onmanorama. The person posting the comment will be in sole ownership of its responsibility. According to the central government's IT rules, obscene or offensive statement made against a person, religion, community or nation is a punishable offense, and legal action would be taken against people who indulge in such activities.