India created history as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, carrying the Axiom-4 crew, including Indian Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, gently docked with the International Space Station (ISS) at 4 p.m. this afternoon. With this, India has an astronaut in space after 41 years. Lucknow-born Shukla is also the second Indian in space, following Rakesh Sharma’s flight in 1984. This historic mission carries four astronauts from the US, India, Poland, and Hungary to the ISS for a 14-day scientific expedition in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), docked with the Harmony module’s space-facing port. The Axiom-4 mission is not just a scientific feat but a testament to India’s rising stature as a global technology powerhouse. It reinforces the nation’s capability to lead space innovation, promote sustainability, and contribute meaningfully to global missions.
Shukla will conduct pioneering experiments related to food and space nutrition. These experiments, developed under a collaboration between ISRO and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), with support from NASA, aim to enhance understanding of sustainable life-support systems, a crucial aspect of future long-duration space travel. The research will also study the effects of microgravity and space radiation on edible microalgae, a nutrient-rich, high-potential food source for future space missions. The experiment will evaluate key growth parameters and examine transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic changes in different algal species in space compared to their behaviour on Earth.
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