CAPE CANAVERAL: After facing numerous postponements, the highly anticipated Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), featuring Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, is now slated for lift-off today, Wednesday, June 25. The launch is scheduled for approximately 12:01 p.m. IST (2:31 a.m. EDT) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This mission holds particular significance for India, as Group Captain Shukla will become the second Indian to journey into space, nearly four decades after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma’s historic flight in 1984. He is also set to be the first Indian to visit the ISS. The Axiom-4 mission is a private astronaut mission, marking a historic collaboration involving India, Hungary, and Poland, with each nation sponsoring its first government-backed human spaceflight in over 40 years.
The four-member crew, which includes former NASA astronaut and Axiom Space’s Director of Human Spaceflight Peggy Whitson (Commander), pilot Shubhanshu Shukla from India, and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary, will be carried aboard SpaceX’s renowned Falcon 9 rocket.
The journey to orbit has been fraught with delays, initially due to issues with an electrical harness in the Crew Dragon module, followed by concerns over a liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon 9 rocket, and technical investigations into a potential leak in the Russian-built Zvezda module of the ISS. However, SpaceX has announced that “all systems are looking good” for today’s launch, with a favorable weather forecast of 90 percent.
Once docked with the ISS, which is targeted for approximately 4:30 p.m. IST on Thursday, June 26, the crew will embark on a two-week scientific mission. Group Captain Shukla is slated to conduct several India-specific experiments focusing on space nutrition and life support systems, in collaboration with ISRO and NASA. This mission is seen as a crucial step in India’s burgeoning space roadmap, paving the way for future human spaceflight endeavors, including the ambitious Gaganyaan mission.
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