Astronaut Shukla's space journey hits weather snag

AS GROUP CAPTAIN Shubhanshu Shukla gets ready to become the first Indian to go to space in over 40 years, an 18-member team from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), led by chairman V Narayanan, has reached NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to witness the launch of Axiom-4 mission, which had to be postponed by a day due to weather conditions. It is now set to lift-off on Wednesday, 5.30 pm India time.

- ANONNA DUTT

Shukla is the designated pilot for the Axiom-4 mission that will travel to the International Space Station (ISS) -- a journey of 28 hours in space. The mission's Crew Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to dock with ISS around 10 pm India time on Thursday. The transfer of astronauts, from the spacecraft to the ISS, could take another couple of hours after the docking.