LUCKNOW: The 39-year-old Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla , the fighter pilot of Indian Airforce (IAF) and ISRO’s astronaut, has been official named pilot for Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), a private spaceflight for International Space Station (ISS), scheduled for post spring of the current calendar year. NASA and its international partners have approved the crew of the Ax-4 crew, who will be launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, and travel to the space station from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once docked, the private astronauts plan to spend up to 14 days aboard the orbiting laboratory, conducting a mission consisting of science, outreach, and commercial activities.
Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space , will command the commercial mission, while ISRO’s astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla will serve as pilot. The two mission specialists are ESA (European Space Agency) project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary. According to Axiom Space, Group Captain Shukla, a distinguished pilot in the IAF, has been handpicked as one of the four astronauts for the ISRO’s historic Gaganyaan mission—the nation’s inaugural human space flight endeavor.
In a statement, Axiom Space said, “Shukla born on October 10, 1985, in Lucknow, Shukla possesses fluency in both English and his native Hindi. His journey began when he was commissioned into the IAF fighter wing in June 2006. As a combat l.