Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla’s Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station has again been postponed. The mission was earlier expected to be launched on the 22nd of June. In a statement today, NASA said that the space agency needs additional time to continue evaluating International Space Station operations after recent repair work in the aft-most segment of the orbital laboratory’s Zvezda service module. Because of the space station’s interconnected and interdependent systems, NASA wants to ensure the station is ready for additional crew members, and the agency is taking the time necessary to review data.
Meanwhile, the crew remains in quarantine in Florida, and the astronauts stand ready to launch when the station is ready to receive them. Moreover, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft remain healthy on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, will command the commercial mission, while ISRO astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla will serve as pilot. The two mission specialists are European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
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