Page 11 - NIS English 16-31 July,2025
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Space Flight | NATION
AN INDIAN IN SPACE
AFTER A 41-YEAR GAP
ust before India’s first indigenous human
space flight, Gaganyaan, Group Captain
J Shubhanshu Shukla became the first
Indian to step on the International Space
Station with the Axiom-4 mission on June 26.
This mission was launched on June 25 at around
noon Indian time from NASA’s Kennedy Space
Center in Florida, USA. All the astronauts flew in
the Dragon capsule attached to SpaceX’s Falcon-
9 rocket. This spacecraft docked to the Interna-
tional Space Station on June 26 at 4:30 pm after
India’s space journey started with a about 28.5 hours. Axiom Mission-4 (AX-4) is a
sounding rocket launch from a village private space mission that is being conducted in
in Thumba, Kerala. At that time, hardly collaboration with NASA, ISRO, and SpaceX.
Group Captain Shubhanshu is its mission pilot.
anyone would have thought that According to ISRO, this experience of Shubhan-
one day the country would be able shu will be useful in India’s Gaganyaan mission.
to achieve such spectacular success, This is India’s first human space mission, which
which was unimaginable at that time. aims to send Indian astronauts to the lower
An important milestone in this journey orbit of the Earth and bring them back safely.
of success came in 1984, when Wing Along with him, former NASA astronaut and
Commander Rakesh Sharma stepped mission commander Peggy Whitson of America,
into space with the Soviet Union’s Sławosz Uznańsk of Poland, and Tibor Kapu of
Soyuz T-11 mission. Now, 41 years later, Hungary also became a part of the mission. As
soon as the mission was launched, Prime Minis-
fulfilling the dream of 140 crore Indians, ter Narendra Modi congratulated and said that
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu
created a new history by stepping on Shukla is on this mission with the wishes, hopes,
the International Space Station with the and aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians.
Axiom-4 mission...
NEW DIRECTION TO INDIA’S
EXPERIMENTS IN SPACE
The mission’s research portfolio in-
cludes about 60 scientific studies and
experiments related to
July 16-31, 2025 || NEW INDIA SAMACHAR 9
