More details: Found hereFour decades after Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to travel to space, Shubhanshu Shulka, a 39-year-old Indian Air Force officer who is in the final leg of his pre-launch quarantine at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, will on Sunday, June 8, pilot a Dragon spacecraft that will take him, and three others, to the International Space Station (ISS), about 400 km from the Earth.
Shukla, who is set to be the first Indian to step on to the ISS, will spend two weeks carrying out various experiments and studies in space.
Though India or the Indian Space Research Organisation ( ISRO ) has had little role to play in the planning and execution of the mission ⁘ apart from securing a seat for an Indian on the spacecraft ⁘ Shulka's journey couldn't have come at a better time for the country's space programme as it prepares for Gaganyaan, India's own human spaceflight.
The Dragon spacecraft, as well as the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch it into space, are built by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, one of the biggest private space companies in the world. The mission is being operated and managed by Axiom Space, a nine-year-old private entity focused on commercial spaceflight services. The US space agency NASA is facilitating this mission as part of its broader initiative to encourage private operators to participate in commercial space transportation activities in Lower Earth Orbits.
The four-member crew also has astronauts from Poland and Hungary – countries that, like India, are sending their nationals to space after 40 years ⁘ underlining the very diverse nature of participation in this mission.
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