Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will be the second Indian citizen ever in space, after the late Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma. The Axiom Mission 4 to the International Space Station will be carrying India’s Shubhanshu Shukla and three other astronauts. The India’s second mission to space launches today, and will lift off at 12.01 pm on June 25, Wednesday.
The launch was earlier scheduled for June 22 but had to be deferred due to circumstances. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will be India’s second astronaut going into space, four decades after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma who scripted history in 1984.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft flying on a Falcon-9 rocket will lift off from the Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States. This is the exact the spot from where Neil Armstrong had set off for the moon on Apollo 11 in 1969. The Indian gallant, Shubhanshu Shukla, a 39-year-old fighter pilot was chosen by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) as the prime astronaut for this historic flight. He had been following the precautionary quarantine for over a month before the lift-off, a mandatory process meant to ensure the crew remains healthy and in agile state to fly.
On this Axiom 4 fortnight-long mission, also called as Ax-4, the four-member crew will conduct 60 scientific experiments, seven of which have been proposed by methodical Indian researchers. Group Captain Shukla will participate in a space-to-Earth outreach programme and interact with a VIP from space. Seven crew members are already stationed at the ISS (International Space Station) as of June 25.
In the past, there were multiple delays for Axiom-4’s take-off since the first launch date, May 29, was announced. The delays were linked to varied issues including weather and technical glitches identified by the experts. June 25 is the sixth revised date announced by the US space agency NASA, (National Aeronautics & Space Administration).
The Indo-US Axiom-4 mission, sometimes referred to as Mission Akash Ganga, was born out of the India-USA joint statement during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States in June 2023. The agreement envisioned a collaborative effort between ISRO and NASA to send an Indian astronaut to the ISS, marking a new chapter in Indo-US space cooperation. The Axiom 4 is a private spaceflight run by Axiom Space, a company based in Houston, working with NASA.
As of 2025, seven people of Indian origin have been in space earlier. The first astronaut of the Indian nationality, was Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma on Soyuz T-11, followed by three astronauts – Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams, and Raja Chari, who flew as NASA astronauts.
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