Shubhanshu Shukla’s space sojourn, as part of the Axiom-4 mission, holds significance for India for many reasons. To start with, Shukla’s voyage ends a wait of little over four decades for an Indian to mark their presence outside Earth, after Rakesh Sharma became the first in 1984. In the interim, the country celebrated Indian-origin astronauts flying into space — and mourned the death of Kalpana Chawla in the Columbia disaster. It built enviable space prowess and punched much above its
Shubhanshu Shukla’s space sojourn, as part of the Axiom-4 mission, holds significance for India for many reasons. To start with, Shukla’s voyage ends a wait of little over four decades for an Indian to mark their presence outside Earth, after Rakesh Sharma became the first in 1984. In the interim, the country celebrated Indian-origin astronauts flying into space — and mourned the death of Kalpana Chawla in the Columbia disaster. It built enviable space prowess and punched much above its weight when it came to missions in Earth’s neighbourhood. But it remained on the sidelines of manned spaceflight. So, Shukla in space has great symbolic value for its space ambitions.
Second, Shukla’s presence on Axiom-4 is of immense learning value for the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) as it gears up for its manned space programme, Gaganyaan. On-ground preparations for the mission will benefit significantly from the learnings the second Indian in space brings back with him, injecting critical readiness into the training of India’s future astronauts. Given spaceflight’s unique aspects — the heightened safety protocols and compliance, the impact of zero gravity on the human body and task execution, among others — this is invaluable learning from lived experience.
Third, an Indian in space fires a billion imaginations and stokes aspirations. This can only be good for a country that aims to be a science and technology superpower. Inspired school and university students can mean a rich harvest of scientific minds in the years to come. To that end, Shukla’s spaceflight is not his alone, but of all Indians, including many young people who have their eyes set on stars.
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