India's Shubhanshu Shukla to serve as pilot after NASA approves Axiom-4 mission to ISS

ISRO astronaut and Indian Air Force (IAF) officer, Shubhanshu Shukla, will take on the role of pilot on the Axiom Mission 4, or Ax-4, that will go to the International Space Station (ISS) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than Spring 2025, the US space agency said on Thursday.

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Group Captain Shukla will make history as the first Indian astronaut to visit the orbiting laboratory aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. A serving officer in the IAF, he has also been chosen as an astronaut for India's Gaganyaan Mission.

Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and Director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, will command the commercial mission, while ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) astronaut Shukla will serve as pilot, said NASA.

The two mission specialists are ESA (European Space Agency) project astronaut Sławosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.