BENGALURU: A day after ISRO and NASA said the Axiom-4 launch had been postponed indefinitely, ISRO on Saturday said the manned mission will launch soon. While earlier in the day ISRO had announced that Axiom Space was targeting the launch for June 19, 2025, the date was withdrawn by late evening and ISRO said the next launch date will be announced soon. ISRO said, “During a follow-on coordination meeting between ISRO, Axiom Space and SpaceX, it was confirmed that the liquid oxygen leak observed in the Falcon 9 launch vehicle has been successfully resolved. Axiom Space is now working out a new date for the earliest possible launch of the Ax-04 mission.”
Teams from ISRO, NASA and Axiom Space have been closely working for the launch of the 14-day manned mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Four astronauts, including ISRO’s Gaganyatri Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, are part of the mission. Shukla is the mission pilot.
The launch was initially targeted for May 29, but was deferred to June 8 because of the observations in the electrical harness in the Crew Dragon Module. The launch was then postponed to June 9 because of the delay in the preparedness of the Falcon-9 vehicle. The mission was again put off to June 10 due to poor weather conditions at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
Also during inspections and hot fire tests on June 8, the team observed an oxygen leak in the engine bay. Anomalies in one of the engine actuators were also seen. The launch was then rescheduled to June 11, assuming that the issues had been addressed.
On June 11, NASA and ISRO flagged their concerns to Roscosmos- Russia’s Space Agency, to evaluate the new pressure signature in the Zvezda Service Module in ISS because of the air leak. During discussions, ISRO had recommended to Axiom Space, NASA and SpaceX to carry out in-situ repairs or replacements and conduct a low-temperature leak test to validate the performance of the system before going ahead with the launch.