Axiom 4 Mission: Shubhanshu Shukla becomes second Indian in space after Rakesh Sharma and first to reach the ISS, 40 years after Sharma’s 1984 Salyut-7 mission.
The Axiom 4 Mission’s Dragon capsule, carrying Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and three crewmates, successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday at 4.30 pm IST.
Shukla and the team lifted off aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, powered by a Falcon 9 rocket, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Wednesday. The crew is scheduled to spend 14 days on the ISS conducting scientific research in microgravity.
With this mission, Shukla became only the second Indian to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma, and the first Indian to reach the ISS in four decades. Sharma had spent eight days in orbit aboard the Soviet Union’s Salyut-7 station in 1984.
Ahead of the launch, Shukla had expressed hope that his mission would inspire the next generation, just as Sharma’s journey had done decades earlier.
In a message from space, Shukla described adapting to microgravity as “like learning to live again, like a baby,” and called the experience of floating in a vacuum “amazing.” Reflecting on the 30-day pre-launch quarantine, he said, “All I could think was — just let us go.”
The Dragon capsule, mounted atop the two-stage Falcon 9, lit up the night sky as it launched, trailing a glowing yellow plume over Florida’s Atlantic coast. Live footage showed the astronauts seated calmly in their white-and-black suits, strapped into the pressurised cabin as the spacecraft began its journey to low Earth orbit.
The autonomously piloted Crew Dragon spacecraft of the Axiom 4 Mission was set to reach the International Space Station (ISS) after a 28-hour journey, docking with the orbiting outpost as both spacecraft cruise roughly 400 km (250 miles) above Earth.
The Axiom 4 crew will be welcomed aboard the ISS by its seven current residents – three NASA astronauts, one Japanese astronaut, and three Russian cosmonauts.
The four-member Axiom 4 team is led by 65-year-old Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut and now director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space. Her teammates include Shubhanshu Shukla (39) from India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski (41) from Poland, and Tibor Kapu (33) from Hungary.
This marks the fourth mission by Houston-based Axiom Space since 2022, as the company expands its portfolio of private and international astronaut missions to low Earth orbit.
For India, Poland, and Hungary, this launch represents a historic return to human spaceflight after over four decades and their first crewed mission to the ISS.
Mission commander Whitson holds the US record for most cumulative time in space – 675 days – across four missions. She became NASA’s first female chief astronaut and the first woman to command the ISS. She previously commanded the Axiom 2 Mission in 2023.
Wednesday’s launch also marked SpaceX’s 18th human spaceflight, a milestone in its collaboration with NASA that began in 2020, restoring the US’s ability to send astronauts to space from its own soil after the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
Axiom Space, co-founded by a former NASA ISS program head, is also among a few companies building a commercial space station, aiming to take over after the ISS is retired by around 2030.
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