Shukla‘s first spaceflight, and the first orbital human spaceflight for an Indian citizen since Rakesh Sharma in 1984 – by Frederic Eger.

Axiom Space, a Houston-based company, is set to launch the first Indian astronaut to orbit since 1984. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will serve as pilot for the Ax-4 mission, which is scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) on June 11 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The four-person Ax-4 will be commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who is now Axiom’s director of human spaceflight. The other 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 researchand technology demonstrations aboard the ISS, with the goal of completing over 60 experiments with contributions from more than 30 countries. It will be the first time in space for Shukla, Uznański-Wiśniewski, and Kapu, and the first time representatives from each of their countries flies a mission to the ISS.
Poland, Hungary, and India have all had astronauts fly to space before, but have never sent anyone to the ISS. Only India is currently in the midst of developing and testing its own crew-capable spacecraft, Gaganyaan, which is scheduled to launch astronauts for the first time in 2027. Last year, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that Shukla will be one of the four astronauts to fly that inaugural crewed mission. 

“Captain Shukla, are you ready for the ride? Will you be doing yoga in space, like your idol Rakkesh Sharma did 1984?”

Dr V. Narayanan, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Director. 

Ax-4 will mark Shukla’s first spaceflight, and the first orbital human spaceflight for an Indian citizen since 1984. That previous honor fell to Rakesh Sharma, the only other person from the nation to have reached space to date. The same program is also responsible for launching the first Polish citizen to space in 1978, and the first Hungarian astronaut in 1980.

Shukla’s Ax-4 crewmates are also very accomplished in their fields. Whitson holds the record for most cumulative time spent in space by an American (675 days), has flown to space four times prior to this mission. Uznański-Wiśniewski used to serve as chief engineer for the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, before becoming a member of the European Space Agency’s Astronaut Reserve Class of 2022. 

Shukla’s name as a member of the astronaut team was first officially announced in public on 27 February 2024, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the names of the astronaut team members for India’s first human space mission at ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. He will join a crew led by commander Peggy Whitson and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu.