Axiom 4 Mission to launch today with IAF Shubhanshu Shukla as the pilot

New Delhi (India) June 25: With the launch of its second astronaut into space, India is poised to make space history. Gp. Capt. Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Air Force has boarded the Dragon spacecraft and is prepared for the initial flight to the Space Station, where he will spend 14 days conducting remarkable experiments and investigations that were created by the Indian Space and Research Organisation (Isro).

SpaceX posted, “All systems are looking good for Wednesday’s launch @Axiom_space’s AX-4 mission to the space station, and weather is 90 percent favourable for lift off” on social media platform X.

On June 25 at 12:01 PM, the launch sequence will begin from Launch Complex 39-A at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. In order to maintain mission safety, the crew has been restricted to a quarantine bubble since May 25.

The spacecraft is scheduled to make contact with the International Space Station on Thursday at approximately 4:30 pm after a 28-hour flight. The planned duration of the astronauts' stay on the ISS is around 14 days.

Since its original May 29 launch date, the mission has experienced multiple delays for a variety of reasons, including launch vehicle issues and variations in the pressure on the ISS's Zvezda module. Space authorities have been attempting to repair the Zvezda leak for years since it was initially discovered in 2019. 

India is making its space comeback with this mission, some 41 years after Rakesh Sharma became the country's first astronaut.

The fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station is Axiom-4. The Falcon 9 rocket will launch the astronauts onto a SpaceX Dragon spaceship.

The mission will be led by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut and head of human spaceflight for Axiom Space in the United States. The mission specialists will be Tibor Kapu of Hungary and Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, who is a project astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA). The pilot will be Shubhanshu Shukla of ISRO.

The mission intends to conduct around 60 scientific investigations and activities on behalf of 31 countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Poland, Hungary, India and countries throughout Europe.

With each country's first government-sponsored flight in nearly 40 years, the Axiom-4 mission is a private astronaut trip to the ISS which will "realise the return" to human spaceflight for Poland, Hungary and India. Axiom says that while the trip will be the second human spaceflight mission in the history of these countries, it will be the first time that all three countries have carried out a mission aboard the ISS.

Both the NASA+ website and the SpaceX website offer live streaming of the Axiom mission's official launch. About two hours before the mission's departure, a live webcast will start which can also be seen on X @SpaceX.

Aadrika Tayal