BENGALURU: At 5.54 pm IST on Thursday, India’s Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla (call sign ‘Shux’), mission pilot on Axiom-4 (Ax-4), became the first Indian astronaut to enter the International Space Station (ISS) after the mission’s DragonX spacecraft, named Grace, docked with the space laboratory at 4.01 pm IST, 29 minutes ahead of schedule.
Immediately on docking, the mission commander Peggy Whitson of the USA, who is a former NASA astronaut and current director of Axiom Space (human space flight), sent a message to Mission Control Huston ground station and to the 11-astronaut team already on the ISS, “Grace happy to be on Harmony” – Harmony being the module on the ISS which provides international docking adapters on its space-facing and forward ports for commercial crew vehicles, like Grace. Shukla was the second to enter the ISS after Peggy.
The entire docking exercise, in slow capture mode, was completed autonomously by Grace, with mission pilot Shukla’s services required only if any maneuvering glitches had occurred.
All the four Ax-4 mission crew astronauts, including Ax-4 mission specialists Stawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary, were warmly greeted with hugs and cheers by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Roscosmos (Russian Space Agency) astronauts already aboard the ISS.
Entire docking exercise completed in 13 minutes
Explaining the slow capture of Grace by the docking mechanism of the ISS, experts said the relative speed at which the Ax-4 mission spacecraft was gaining on the ISS was slower than a human walk although the speeds that the space laboratory and the spacecraft were doing was a whopping 7.5 km per second, revolving the Earth every 90 minutes.
Incidentally, soon after docking, Ax-4 astronauts experienced a minor technical glitch with their communication system, needing five additional minutes before commencing the hatch opening procedures to enter the ISS. The entire docking exercise was completed in 13 minutes, of which the exercise of establishing power connections between Grace and ISS took two minutes. The docking took place when the ISS was over the North Atlantic at an altitude of 400 km.
Experts said that over the next two weeks, the Ax-4 mission crew members will undertake 60 listed experiments, conduct live classes and interact with students, VIPs and experts on the Earth.
Shukla will conduct seven experiments, which will include investigating impacts of spaceflight on six varieties of crop seeds to help understand how crops grow in space for future exploration missions; comparing two strains of cyanobacteria to investigate growth rates, cellular responses, and biochemical activity in microgravity; studying the impact of microgravity on seed germination and growth of crop seeds; investigating the impact of microgravity on the growth, metabolism, and genetic activity of microalgae as compared to that on Earth; identifying pathways responsible for skeletal muscle dysfunction in microgravity and exploring therapeutic target strategies; studying physical and cognitive impact of utilizing computer screens in microgravity; Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) outreach activities for Indian students; and probing revival, survival, and reproduction of tardigrades (microanimals known for their extreme resilience in challenging environments, including in space).
