On setting a record of being the first Indian to enter the International Space Station (ISS) on June 26, 2025, 39-year-old Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, addressed the nation for the first time from space, exclaiming “What a ride!”. In his message intended for 1.4 crore Indians, he said: “This journey of mine is not a beginning to the International Space Station, but to India’s Human Space Programme. I want all of you to be part of this journey. Your chest should swell with pride… Together, let’s initiate India’s Human Space Programme.”
If Gp Capt Shukla is the first Indian to enter the ISS, he is also the first Indian to be a space mission pilot, that of the DragonX spacecraft of Axiom-4 (Ax-4) Space Mission, in which Shukla (call sign ‘Shux’) is part of a four-member team. The other three members are mission commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space and two mission specialists, European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut Sławosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
Axiom-4 (Ax-4) Mission is a collaboration involving Axiom Space, the NASA, the ISRO, and the European Space Agency. The Ax-4 mission will also be remembered for enabling an Indian astronaut to return to space after 41 years, after the space mission of (then) Sqn Ldr Rakesh Sharma in April 1984.
When Shukla says the journey to the ISS is actually a beginning “to India’s Human Space Programme”, the larger picture is significant: besides the records set on the ongoing 14-day Axiom Space Mission aboard the ISS, Shukla is also one of the four Indian astronauts selected for the country’s maiden manned space mission scheduled some time in 2027 – the Gaganyaan Mission. ISRO’s Gaganyaan mission will involve heavy-lift launcher – Human-rated LVM3, or HLVM3 – launching an orbital module with three Indian astronauts in it to a low earth orbit of 400 km for three days, before returning to Earth by splashing down in the ocean and being retrieved by the Indian Navy or the Coast Guard ships.
The reason why Shukla’s Ax-4 space mission experience aboard the ISS is crucial is because it exposes him to a longer duration of stay and conduct of experiments in space. Gaganyaan mission will be much shorter. The experience that Shukla will bring back to the table will be invaluable. It will include the experience of living in space for two weeks, during the lift-off effects on the body, and that of splashdown at the end of the mission. In addition will be the valuable data that he will have gathered through his seven experiments that he will be conducting in space over the 14-day mission onboard the ISS, which will be of crucial relevance for India’s own manned space missions in the years ahead.
Also, as Shux will have already had the experience of a space mission following the Ax-4 mission, he may likely be among the three Indian astronauts to be on the maiden Gaganyaan mission. The other three Gaganyatris (as Gaganyaan astronauts are called) are Gp Capt Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Gp Capt Ajit Krishnan and Gp Capt Angad Prathap.
Born on October 10, 1985, and a native of Lucknow, Shukla is the youngest of three siblings born to the now-retired government official Shambhu Dayal Shukla and homemaker Asha Shukla. As a 14-year-old, he was inspired by the 1999 Kargil War, which in turn influenced him to join the National Defence Academy at Khadakwasla, Pune, where he got his BSc in Computer Science in 2005. He later underwent training at the Indian Air Force Academy at Dundigal near Hyderabad.
He was commissioned as a Flying Officer in June 2006 in the fighter stream of the IAF, turning out to be an impressive air combat leader and later a seasoned test pilot with the experience of flying a slew of aircraft.
From Shukla, the fighter pilot of the IAF, where it is believed “sky is the limit”, Shux, the astronaut, now believes “Sky is never the limit!” for Indians, and is the man who is showing the way beyond it.
