Four decades after Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to travel to space, Shubhanshu Shukla, a 39-year-old Indian Air Force officer who is in the final leg of his pre-launch quarantine at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, will on Sunday, June 8, pilot a Dragon spacecraft that will take him, and three others, to the International Space Station (ISS), about 400 km from the Earth. Shukla, who is set to be the first Indian to step on to the ISS, will spend two weeks carrying out various experiments and studies in space. Though India or the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has had little role to play in the planning and execution of the mission - apart from securing a seat for an Indian on the spacecraft - Shulka's journey couldn't have come at a better time for the country's space programme as it prepares for Gaganyaan, India's own human spaceflight. The Dragon spacecraft, as well as the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch it into space, are built by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, one of the biggest private space companies in the world. The mission is being operated and managed by Axiom Space, a nine-year-old private entity focused on commercial spaceflight services. The US space agency NASA is facilitating this mission as part of its broader initiative to encourage private operators to participate in commercial space transportation activities in Lower Earth Orbits. The four-member crew also has astronauts from Poland and Hungary – countries that, like India, are sending their nationals to space after 40 years - underlining the very diverse nature of participation in this mission. Shukla’s space journey was not planned like this. He was selected and trained for Gaganyaan, India’s maiden human spaceflight mission that was originally scheduled for 2022 but is now expected to happen in early 2027. In the meanwhile, in 2023, NASA and ISRO agreed to develop a “strategic framework for human spaceflight cooperation”, its immediate result being the inclusion of Indian astronauts in the Axiom-4 mission. Besides Shukla, Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, another Indian astronaut selected for the Gaganyaan programme, also underwent advanced training for the Axiom-4 mission, and is on backup. ISRO has designed about 10 experiments for this mission. These include investigations into the effects of microgravity on muscle dysfunctions, and the physical and cognitive impacts of utilising computer screens in space. Another experiment would study the impact of spaceflight on the growth of six varieties of crop seeds. ISRO is also sending a few tardigrades to the ISS. These microscopic, water-dwelling organisms, also called water bears or moss piglets, are known to survive in extremely harsh environments. They are often studied in space to gain a better understanding of how life can survive in extraterrestrial conditions. These are the experiments that ISRO would have carried out on Gaganyaan if the mission had gone ahead of Axiom-4. Now it has the opportunity to conduct follow-up and more advanced experiments on its own missions. Besides, Shukla, who is the designated pilot of Space X's Dragon spacecraft, can pass on invaluable experience and feedback to his colleagues when they travel to space as part of Gaganyaan. “The Axiom-4 mission being so close to the Gaganyaan flight is a very good opportunity for ISRO. Shuks (Shukla), being the pilot, will learn a lot from this mission, and those would be very relevant for India’s other astronauts who are waiting. This mission is a very fortuitous and profitable learning experience for India. Even the ground scientists… they will get to practise how to interact with crew in space and the mission control team. All this would be invaluable to ISRO not just for Gaganyaan but also for the space station it plans to set up in a few years’ time,” said Michael Lopez-Alegria, a famed US astronaut who holds the world record for the maximum number of spacewalks (10) and the maximum time spent in spacewalks (close to 68 hours). Lopez-Alegria, who commanded the previous mission of Axiom Space, named Axiom-3, was in Delhi earlier this month. While on the face of it Shukla’s flight appears similar to the one undertaken by Rakesh Sharma 41 years ago, aboard the Soyuz T-11 spacecraft of the then Soviet Union, the contexts and objectives of the two are vastly different. “Rakesh Sharma’s spaceflight was largely a result of Indo-Soviet friendship and close relationship between the space agencies of the two countries. India’s capabilities were very limited then, and a human spaceflight programme of its own was nowhere on the horizon. Though hugely important, and a big learning experience, there was little from Sharma’s flight that ISRO could have utilised in practical terms. Shukla’s spaceflight, on the other hand, is very different. It is not an isolated event. It feeds in directly into the Gaganyaan programme, and must be seen as one of the several preparatory steps that ISRO is taking in the run-up to its own human spaceflight mission,” said Mylswamy Annadurai, retired ISRO scientist who was the project director for the Chandrayaan-1 mission. Even Rakesh Sharma’s flight was not supposed to be an isolated event. More such spaceflights with Indian astronauts were under discussion. But the accident of the US space shuttle Challenger in 1986 led to a reassessment of human spaceflight plans everywhere, and ended that initiative. Along with his two Soviet colleagues on the mission, Sharma carried out several space experiments during his flight. These resulted in ISRO getting access to important and novel data, though the space agency had little utility for them at that time. In 1984, India did not even have a decent rocket of its own. The only one it had, SLV-3, could barely carry 30-40 kg to Lower Earth Orbits. India’s important satellites, like those of the INSAT series, were being launched from the United States. Four decades later, India’s space capabilities are almost on a par with the best. It has already landed on the Moon, orbited around Mars, has an ongoing mission studying the Sun, is preparing to send humans into space and a mission to Venus, is building a space station of its own, and planning to land humans on the Moon. Shukla’s spaceflight is much more than a joyride offered by a friendly country. “There are many building blocks for a complex mission like Gaganyaan. ISRO has already carried out several test flights. Recovery missions have been done, reusable launch vehicles have been tested. Later this year, we will also have the first uncrewed flight in the lead-up to the actual crewed flight. All these are building blocks. Shukla’s flight is also one of the building blocks. It is fully integrated with ISRO’s immediate and long-term objectives, particularly the Gaganyaan mission,” Annadurai said. With days left for Shukla's space odyssey, Lopez-Alegria had an important advice for him: don’t spend all your time only doing experiments. “Enjoy the experience and find time to look at the Earth at every opportunity. I wish I had been told this during my first space trip,” he said. “The astronaut’s time in space is valuable with strict timelines drawn for tasks and scientific experiments. It is natural for an astronaut to be concerned about completing these tasks. But it is also important to soak in the experience and give a hard look to the wonder that is this universe,” he said.
