IAF's Shubhanshu Shukla Likely To Be Launched On NASA's Axiom Mission 4 In May
Shubhanshu Shukla will pilot Axiom Mission 4 to the ISS in May 2025, becoming India's second astronaut in space. The mission, aboard a SpaceX Dragon, will last up to 14 days, according to NASA.
Group Captain and Indian Air Force (IAF) officer Shubhanshu Shukla, who was recently chosen as the ‘Prime’ astronaut for Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Gaganyaan mission, is set to fly into space on NASA’s Axiom Mission 4 crew in May this year.
According to the American space agency, the crew will launch “no earlier than May 2025", aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the space station.
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It also said the crew will spend up to 14 days at the orbiting laboratory.
Shukla was selected as the pilot for Axiom Mission 4 in January this year, and will be India’s second astronaut to go to space since 1984.
The Axiom Mission 4 will be commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Axiom Space’s director of Human Spaceflight.
The two mission specialists are ESA project astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary.
The Ax-4 mission will “realize the return" to human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary, with each nation’s first government-sponsored flight in more than 40 years.
The first private astronaut mission to the station, Axiom Mission 1, lifted off in April 2022 for a 17-day mission aboard the orbiting laboratory. The second private astronaut mission to the station, Axiom Mission 2, launched in May 2023 with four private astronauts who spent eight days in orbit.
The most recent private astronaut mission, Axiom Mission 3, launched in January 2024. The crew spent 18 days docked to the space station.
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