BENGALURU: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla on Sunday said that India is a nation that has made immense progress since the launch of the Aryabhatta satellite to the current preparations for the Gaganyaan mission.
Shukla, who along with ISRO chairman V Narayanan, released a pair of commemorative postage stamps conceived by India Post to celebrate India’s human spaceflight programme, said, “How far we have come in the past decades tells us where we want to go.”
Shukla highly lauded ISRO for its contributions, adding that it had always been a symbol of aspiration for the entire country. “Even before 2019, when I had not joined ISRO yet, it was a shining beacon guiding us with the hope that everything is possible. Hopefully, very soon, we will be able to launch our own astronauts on our own rockets, on our own launch vehicles, into space,” he said.
While orbiting Earth during the Axiom-04 mission, Shukla spoke to children in India on the ground, answering their questions. Likewise, many schoolchildren from Bengaluru were present at the inauguration to ask him questions about his journey, to which he obliged.
He elaborated on how different a capsule pilot is from an aircraft pilot (having been both). Moon remains at the centre of India’s focus at the moment, especially with the upcoming Gaganyaan mission, he said.