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Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla set to join Indian astronauts who went to space. See full list
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will be joining an Indo-US collaborative space mission, making him the fifth Indian origin astronaut to go to space.
Group captain Shubhanshu Shukla is the latest addition to the list of Indians in space, as he has been picked to go on an Indo-US collaborative mission to the International Space Station, ISRO announced.
Group captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair has been picked as a backup for the mission as well. The two ‘gaganyatris’ as ISRO has called them, begin their training in the first week of August.
Shukla is now the fifth Indian-origin astronaut to go to space, and only the second one of Indian nationality to do so.
Here's a look at other Indians who paved the way in space:
1. Rakesh Sharma
Rakesh Sharma, then a squadron leader in the Indian Air Force, was the first person of Indian nationality to travel to outer space in 1984. He was part of the crew of Soyuz-T11, a joint mission between the Russian and Indian space agencies.
Sharma spent 7 days, 21 hours and 40 minutes in space - conducting various scientific experiments with his Soviet crew members.
Rakesh Sharma's television news conference with then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is still remembered. Gandhi asked him how India looked from space. He replied, “Sare jahaan se accha” (Better than the whole world).
2. Kalpana Chawla
The first Indian origin woman to go to space, Kalpana Chawla, went to space twice, but tragically died during her second mission.
Kalpana Chawla took her first flight on the space shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a robotic arm operator.
On her second flight aboard Columbia in 2003, she died along with seven other crew members, as the shuttle disintegrated during its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Her legacy, however, has lived on with space craters, space missions, supercomputers and numerous awards named after the brilliant scientist and aerospace engineer she was.
3. Sunita Williams
Sunita Williams, once held the record for longest space walk by a woman at 50 hours and 40 minutes, and also most spacewalks by a woman astronaut with a total of 7.
Williams holds the record for most number of space flights by any Indian origin astronaut, with three expeditions - 2006, 2012 and 2024.
In 2007, she ran the first marathon by any person in space. From 1998, when she first began training as an astronaut, to 2024, she has a 26-year-long career as an astronaut.
4. Raja Chari
In 2017, Raja Chari, who was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force, first began training to be an astronaut at NASA.
By 2020, he was part of the Artemis team, an ambitious project, whose goal was “to help pave the way for the next lunar missions including sending the first woman and next man to walk on the lunar surface in 2024.”
He became the first NASA rookie to command a spaceflight since 1981, when he went to space in the Space-X crew 3.
Chari showed his skills and presence of mind, when his crew mate's helmet camera came loose during a spacewalk and Chari managed to fix it on the go.
