Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, a former Indian Air Force pilot and now astronaut at the age of 39 years, sent his first personal message from orbit today, several hours after launching on the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). This historic launch is significant for India as it represents the country’s return to human spaceflight after a gap of 41 years.
“Hello everyone, namaskar from space. I am thrilled to be here with my fellow astronauts. Wow, what a ride it was. When I was sitting in the capsule on the launchpad, the only thought in my mind was: let’s just go,” Group Captain Shukla said.
#WATCH | "Namaskar from space! I am thrilled to be here with my fellow astronauts. What a ride it was," says Indian astronaut Group Captain Subhanshu, who is piloting #AxiomMission4, as he gives details about his journey into space.
— ANI (@ANI) June 26, 2025
Carrying a soft toy Swan, he says, in Indian… pic.twitter.com/Z09Mkxhfdj
“When the ride started, it was something – you getting pushed back in the seat. It was an amazing ride. And then suddenly nothing. You are floating in a vacuum,” he said.
Strapped into his seat inside the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which had launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre yesterday, Mr Shukla publicly narrated the experience of his trip to space.
“I am learning like a baby; how to walk and eat in space,” Mr Shukla said.
In his first hours aboard the spacecraft, Mr Shukla remarked on the surreal experience of microgravity. “I was not feeling very great when we got shot into the vacuum,” he admitted candidly, “but I have been told I am sleeping a lot since yesterday.”
Mr. Shukla is one of a four-person crew for the Ax-4 mission, including Commander Peggy Whitson, a veteran NASA astronaut, who has done three missions previously, and mission specialists Tibor Kapu from Hungary and Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland.
Mr. Shukla’s family saw the launch live as did thousands of others who gathered at public watch parties across India, Hungary, Poland, and the United States. People were cheering from Lucknow to Budapest and Gdansk to Houston as the Falcon 9 took off with a launch, which took place from the historic LC-39A pad that Apollo 11 launched from on its way to the Moon in July of 1969.
With this flight, Mr. Shukla will be the second Indian citizen in space, and the first Indian citizen to reach the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth at 7.5 kilometres per second. The last Indian in space, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, flew in an Indo-Soviet mission in April of 1984.
This flight was originally supposed to launch May 29, but the weather and some technical issues with the Falcon-9 rocket and Dragon capsule have postponed the launch multiple times after NASA, SpaceX, and Axiom conducted months of anomaly resolution processes to be sure everything was in working order to successfully complete lift-off.
