Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla is currently set to blast off into space on June 19, bound for the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Axiom-4 commercial mission, confirmed the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday.
Originally scheduled to depart on May 29, the mission faced several delays as SpaceX and NASA addressed technical malfunctions, including a liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon 9 rocket and a leak in the ISS’s Russian module.
“NASA announced Thursday that it was investigating a leak on board the ISS’s Russian module,” the report said.
SpaceX first pushed the launch date to June 8, then delayed it further to June 10, and again to June 11, before finally confirming June 19 as the launch date. SpaceX, which is launching both the rocket and the space capsule, found a leak of liquid oxygen in the Falcon-9 rocket and thus had to delay.
Shubhanshu Shukla, who is ISRO’s representative, will be the pilot for the mission. Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, current director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, will command the flight.
Completing the crew as mission specialists are Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, a project astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
The mission is another major milestone for India’s presence in human spaceflight as Shukla becomes one of the limited number of Indian astronauts to fly towards the ISS. Axiom-4 is under Axiom Space’s commercial missions to move forward with international cooperation and private-sector involvement in space travel.
All systems now go for liftoff. The mission will go ahead without delay on June 19, in a new era for India’s space program.