On June 25, 2025, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla created history. He became the second Indian to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma’s 1984 mission. He launched as mission pilot on the Axiom-4 (Ax-4) mission aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9, lifting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Shukla now represents India in global human spaceflight, even before Gaganyaan lifts off.
Born on October 10, 1985, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, Shukla studied at the National Defence Academy. He earned a BSc in Computer Science and joined the Indian Air Force in 2006 as a fighter pilot.
With over 2,000 flight hours, he has flown aircraft like the Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, and Hawk. In March 2024, he earned the rank of Group Captain.
In 2019, ISRO selected him for the Gaganyaan astronaut program. He then trained for over a year at Russia’s Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Shukla joined three international astronauts on the 14-day Ax-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). He is conducting scientific experiments on food and nutrition in microgravity, in collaboration with ISRO, DBT, and NASA.
Soon after launch, Shukla addressed India:
“Namaskar, my dear countrymen; we have reached space after 41 years..This is not just the start of my journey but of India’s human spaceflight. Let us embark on this together.”
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In 2023, PM Modi introduced Shukla as one of the astronauts training for Gaganyaan. Commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, praised his technical knowledge as “an asset to the mission.”
Shubhanshu Shukla now stands tall as a symbol of India’s space ambitions.
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