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Spaceship piloted by India's Subhanshu Shukla docks with ISS
The crew will complete docking procedures and spend about 14 days aboard the International Space Station.
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AFP - Thu, 26, Jun 2025
- 07:38 EDT
- 29
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Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla (second from left) with crew members before takeoff / X/@SpaceX
A US commercial mission piloted by Indian astronaut Subhanshu Shukla docked with the International Space Station on June 26, marking the first time in decades that an Indian national has been to space.
Axiom Mission 4, or Ax-4, lifted off early June 25 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a brand-new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule riding a Falcon 9 rocket. Along with Shukla onboard are mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary; and Commander Peggy Whitson of the United States, a former NASA astronaut now with Axiom Space, which organizes private spaceflights.
The capsule, the fifth and final Dragon in the SpaceX fleet, was christened "Grace" after reaching orbit. It made "soft capture" with the orbital lab Thursday at 6:31 am Eastern Time (1031 GMT).
"We are honored to be here, thank you," Whitson said over a live stream of the docking.
The crew will complete docking procedures and spend about 14 days aboard the station, conducting some 60 experiments -- including studies on microalgae, sprouting salad seeds, and the hardiness of microscopic tardigrades in space.
Dragon is go for final approach and docking with the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/kW2FRHsPgb
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 26, 2025
The last time India, Poland or Hungary sent people to space, their current crop of astronauts had not yet been born—and back then they were called cosmonauts, as they all flew on Soviet missions before the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Shukla is the first Indian to reach space since Rakesh Sharma, who flew to the Salyut 7 station in 1984 as part of an Indo-Soviet mission. India's space agency, ISRO, sees this flight as a key step toward its first independent crewed mission, slated for 2027 under the Gaganyaan ("sky craft") program.
"What a fantastic ride," Shukla said in Hindi after liftoff. "This isn't just the start of my journey to the International Space Station—it's the beginning of India's human space program."
Each country is funding its astronaut's seat.
Poland has spent 65 million euros for its astronaut's flight, according to the Polish Space Agency. Hungary announced a $100 million deal with Axiom in 2022, according to spacenews.com, while India has not officially commented.
The Ax-4 launch comes after technical issues delayed the mission, originally slated for early June.
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