Shubhanshu Shukla (left) and specialist Slawosz Uznanski of Poland reviewing a procedure checklist card during training at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on Sept 6, 2024. - AFP
NEW DELHI: More than four decades after the first person from India went to space, the nation is finally about to have a sequel.
Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force test pilot, will be one of four astronauts aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on a flight scheduled to launch on Wednesday (June 11) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The mission will be operated by Texas-based startup Axiom Space and will have a multinational crew that will also include Commander Peggy Whitson of the US, Mission Specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary. They will spend as many as 14 days at the International Space Station.
No Indian has been in orbit since Rakesh Sharma, who flew on a Soviet rocket in 1984, and the return to space has created a flurry of excitement in the South Asian nation.
In Mr Shubhanshu Shukla's hometown of Lucknow, posters wishing the Indian Air Force test pilot him luck dot the city. - AFP
In Shukla’s hometown of Lucknow, about 560km (348 miles) east of New Delhi, posters wishing him luck dot the city and passersby stop and click selfies with his cut-outs.
Local media reported how Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe, part of a 2022 Axiom mission to the ISS, met Shukla’s family last month and addressed their anxieties.
Shukla’s flight will be the opening act for Narendra Modi’s space ambitions in the coming years as his government tries to narrow the gap with nations such as China, which operates its own space station and has plans for a crewed lunar mission by 2030.
India landed a robotic spacecraft near the moon’s south pole in 2023, and the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation aims to launch Shukla and three other Indian astronauts on one of the agency’s own rockets in 2027 for India’s first crewed space mission.
Other plans include Nisar, a joint US-India Earth-observation mission that Nasa and Isro are targeting to launch this month from the Indian agency’s space center in Sriharikota, near Chennai. Isro also wants to create an Indian space station by 2035 and put an Indian astronaut on the moon by 2040.
India’s decision to deepen its space exploration efforts has won support from the global space community.
Last month, the European Space Agency signed a statement of intent to cooperate with Isro on space exploration and a delegation from Japan’s space agency went to Isro headquarters to discuss plans for a lunar mission.
"It is India’s time now,” said Sudheer Kumar N, former director at Isro’s Capacity Building Program Office and an adviser on space projects. India can benefit from the country’s ability to complete missions at a competitive cost and Modi’s policy to encourage private-sector investment in the industry, he said.
India’s return to space was briefly threatened last week by the crossfire between the US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk after Musk said in a social media post that he was going to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft that’s supposed to carry Shukla and others to the ISS. This was after Trump spoke of cancelling Musk’s government subsidies and contracts.
Hours later, Musk clarified Dragon will not be decommissioned.
Shukla’s mission could provide important input for the Gaganyaan programme, Isro’s human spaceflight initiative.
For instance, as part of a joint project between Isero and Nasa, he will take fenugreek seeds and mung beans to germinate in space. Investigating space’s impact on the plants could help future missions produce food, according to Nasa.
"The feedback, learnings from this trip will be used in fine tuning and planning the Gaganyaan mission,” said Kumar. - Bloomberg
