He will become the first Indian astronaut to go to the ISS and the first Indian to go to space in the last 40 years. Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will be the pilot of the upcoming Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA and its international partners had approved the crew for the mission in January this year. Shukla is also one of the four astronaut-designates selected for India’s Gaganyaan mission.
Shukla is an alumnus of NDA and was commissioned on June 17, 2006, in the fighter stream of IAF. He is a Fighter Combat Leader and a Test Pilot with approximately 2,000 hrs of flying experience. He has flown a variety of aircraft, including Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier, An-32 and others.
The mission to the ISS will be launched from the agency’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on June 10, 2025, and the mission crew will spend 14 days on board the space station and will conduct various experiments during the stay. One of the key objectives of this mission is to conduct innovative agricultural experiments in microgravity, focusing on the cultivation of green gram (moong) and fenugreek (methi) seeds. These crops have been carefully chosen to explore their viability as sustainable food sources for long-duration space missions.
The goal is to examine how these plants adapt to the ISS environment and to assess their potential for supporting future space farers through autonomous life-support systems that reduce reliance on Earth-bound resupply missions.
While former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson will command the commercial mission, Group Captain Shukla will be the pilot. European Space Agency project astronauts Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary are also part of the crew.
Sharing his views about the mission, Shukla said,“Axiom-4 mission is very important for India, and it comes at a very opportune time. I am confident that the lessons learnt during the Axiom-4 mission are going to prove invaluable for our journey back home.”
Group captain Shukla, whose mission call sign is ‘Shucks,’ said that witnessing the end-to-end execution of a human space flight mission will provide the crew with key knowledge that will help them fill any gaps they may encounter.
He further added, “I also hope to ignite the curiosity of an entire generation in my country through my mission and drive the innovation that will make many such projects possible for us in the future. I also have a personal agenda of capturing my experience on the station through pictures and videos so that I can share this with all the Bharatwasi (Indians) back home; I truly believe that even though, as an individual, I am travelling to space, this is the journey of 1.4 billion people.”
Shukla’s participation in Ax-4 is a historic milestone for India, aligning with the country’s broader ambitions in space science, food security, and international cooperation. It also marks a critical phase in India’s preparation for future manned missions under ISRO’s Gaganyaan program. Moreover, the Ax-4 mission reinforces the global and collaborative nature of space exploration, bringing together scientists, engineers, and astronauts from multiple nations to address common challenges in life sciences, sustainability, and technology development.
The crew has already entered the quarantine period as the launch date approaches in a few days adding yet another feather in India’s cap!
