NEW DELHI: India celebrated on Wednesday the launch of the Axiom-4 mission, which has taken off to the International Space Station with a crew including the first Indian astronaut in 41 years.
Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday morning, the 14-day mission is a collaboration between American startup Axiom Space, NASA, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule carried the four-member team into orbit.
A private spaceflight, it is led by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, with Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force pilot responsible for flying the spacecraft through launch, orbital insertion, docking with the ISS, undocking, re-entry, and landing.
Another two members of the crew are Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski — a European Space Agency astronaut and the second Polish national in orbit, who will conduct science experiments in microgravity — and Tibor Kapu, a Hungarian mechanical engineer who will perform experiments in space health.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media to wish “all the success” to Shukla and the other astronauts on the Axiom-4 mission.
