Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla’s experience on the International Space Station (ISS) will prove valuable for Gaganyaan, India’s own upcoming human spaceflight programme, V. Narayanan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said on Sunday (August 10, 2025).
Dr. Narayanan was addressing the 13th convocation of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in virtual mode.
Stressing the importance of safety in such missions, Dr. Narayanan reiterated how the Indian side had insisted that the Axiom-4 mission, in which Group Capt. Shukla was a crew member, should be cleared for lift-off only after rectifying the leakage detected on the rocket on July 10.
“Originally the launch was scheduled for June 11. On June 10 we came to know that there was a small leakage in the Falcon 9 rocket of the SpaceX team. And it was the Indian team that raised the objection that without it being corrected, the rocket should not take off,” he said. The launch was put off, thereby ensuring the safety of the astronauts, he recalled.
The leak was corrected, and the launch subsequently took place on July 25. Group Capt. Shukla and other crew members returned safely after spending 18 days in the ISS. Dr. Narayanan also recounted how India, from having launched its space programme with a sounding rocket from America and payload from France in the 1960s, has emerged as a major player in the international space scene. He described the recent successful NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission as an example of this achievement.
