Shubhanshu Shukla's Axiom Space Mission likely tomorrow, says NASA

NEW DELHI: NASA has announced that Shubhanshu Shukla, one of the selected Gaganyaan astronauts, will travel to the International Space Station (ISS) tomorrow. NASA has announced that the launch will be at 12.01 pm Indian time tomorrow.

The rocket will take off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After launching on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, the team will travel to the orbiting laboratory in the new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. NASA has specified that the docking time is 4.30 pm (Indian time) on Thursday, June 26.

Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla got the opportunity as part of the NASA-ISRO collaboration in the Axiom 4 mission organized by NASA and SpaceX. After Rakesh Sharma, the record of the first Indian to travel in space and the first Indian to visit the ISS will also be sought after by Shubhanshu when the mission is completed.

The Axiom 4 mission has been postponed seven times. The trip was postponed earlier due to the failure to complete the work to fix the air leak from the vestibule of the Russian service module of the International Space Station, Zvezda. India has spent Rs 550 crore for Shubhanshu’s trip. He will spend two weeks in the space station.

Experienced Peggy Whitson is the commander of the trip. Two passengers, Slawos Wisniewski (Poland) and Tibor Kapu (Hungary), are also with him. Shubhanshu has a list of preparations to be made at the space station for India's own space mission, Gaganyaan. The journey also includes materials for experiments to be conducted in space.