26 Jun 2025
It has been 41 years since an Indian was part of a spaceflight program.
Today, Shubhanshu Shukla, the Indian Air Force Group Captain, became the first Indian to visit NASA’s orbiting lab on the International Space Station. He piloted SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft carrying four crew members, including himself.
NASA’s mission involved private firms SpaceX and Axiom Space. The craft took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, on June 25th at 12:01 pm IST and landed on June 26th around 4:30 pm IST.
Born in 1985 in Lucknow, Shukla joined the Indian Air Force in 2006. He’s flown over 2,000 flight hours and was selected as a member of a team of four for India’s Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission.
Besides Shukla, Commander Peggy Whitson from the US, Slawosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland, and Tibor Kapu from Hungary are part of the team. They are conducting many India-sponsored experiments for long-duration missions, including microalgae cultivation, human health in space, and plant biology.
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