India in space: 2025 will be remembered for AXIOM-4

Although the Axiom-4 was a private mission, ISRO monitored this mission from very close quarters. This mission was successful on all accounts as the desired objectives set in terms of preparing India’s astronauts for a human spaceflight experience were realized successfully.

- MARTAND JHA

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and Axiom-4 crew return to earth from the International Space Station on 15 July. Axiom Space/ YouTube/ANI

(Axiom Space YouTube ANI)

The Mission Axiom-4 is complete. The year 2025 would be remembered in the history of India’s space program for this mission.

On July 15, 2025, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft safely returned back to earth. From an Indian standpoint, this mission was significant because of the scientific experiments to be conducted by the Indian astronaut, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla at the International Space Station were successfully executed. ‘The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in collaboration with a handful of scientific institutions across India had designed and developed a suite of seven microgravity experiments. These experiments were primarily aimed at enhancing the understanding of the human spaceflight and microgravity science.

The experiments ranged from exploring algal growth to crop viability, cognitive performance in space to cyanobacteria behaviour and muscle regeneration to microbial survivability. To elaborate a bit further, the microbial survivability experiment on space microalgae was designed by the collaboration of ICGEB (International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology) and BRIC-NIPGR (Biotechnology Research and Innovation Council-National Institute of Plant Genome Research). This experiment was about observing the growth and radiation response of edible algae. Similarly, the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru was involved in designing microgravity experiments on tardigrade to check their resilience and ageing patterns. ITT Dharwad was instrumental in designing Microgravity experiment on the growth of methi and moong.