- Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla spent 18 days at the International Space Station on Axiom 4 mission
- PM Modi announced that Mr Shukla will return to India from US very soon
- Gaganyaan aims to launch Indian astronauts from Indian soil using indigenous technology
India's 21st-century space hero, astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, is on his way back to India. Mr Shukla spent 18 days at the International Space Station on the Axiom 4 commercial space mission. Very soon, he would be back in India, announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day address this morning.
While Group Captain Shukla was in space, PM Modi had given him a "homework" - that he should document the entire sequence of his training and stay at the space station, for what would become the handbook for India's own Gaganyaan program, or its first human spaceflight program.
The ambitious program aims to launch an Indian astronaut on an Indian rocket from Indian soil, where the countdown will also be Indian. This program is called Gaganyaan, and the astronauts Gaganyaatris.
Mr Shukla, who has had more than a year of training in the US, has laid the first steps for the program. During this time, he has trained at NASA, Axiom, and SpaceX facilities. Now that he is on his way back to India, he will help India prepare for the human spaceflight.
PM Modi reiterated from the ramparts of the Red Fort today India's plans to have a Bharatiya Antariksh Station (or the Indian Space Station), which is likely to come up by 2035, and to land an Indian on the moon by 2040. Group Captain Shukla and three other astronaut-designates were chosen a few years back, and they were all training to be part of Gaganyaan.
The NASA-ISRO human space mission, called Axiom 4, came up in between, and Mr Shukla was chosen as the prime astronaut. He flew to the International Space Station on a Falcon 9 rocket and a Crew Dragon, both made by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Group Captain Prashant Balakrishna Nair was the standby astronaut, who, in a way, was to act like a sponge and get all the wisdom of the training.
For Gaganyaan, the Launch Vehicle Mark 3 has been made human spaceflight ready, but India is still struggling with the crew module. The environment life control system is taking longer to master, simply because the components cannot be imported.
Now that Group Captain Shukla has undertaken a flight to the space station, he must have learned the basics of human spaceflight. While in space, he conducted seven India-specific experiments. Those have now been brought back to the principal investigators in India; the results are expected soon.
Now, all eyes are on when PM Modi gets to meet Mr Shukla.
It may be recalled that in 1984, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma had flown to the Russian or the USSR Space Station and created history by becoming the first Indian astronaut to go to space. Group Captain Shukla, who follows in his footsteps, will now play a critical role in the Gaganyaan program. He is just 39 years old and has a long career ahead during which he can contribute to the program.
Whenever India succeeds in sending an Indian to space using indigenous technology, the country will become the fourth nation in the world to achieve the feat. The first was the USSR, followed by the US, and then China. China did it in 2003, and no other country since has succeeded in sending humans to space using their own technology.
Now, the real work begins for Mr Shukla as he gets down to make the Gaganyaan program successful. His colleagues have said that he is a superbly intelligent person, cool and calm, and that he would be able to contribute to the human spaceflight program in a big way.
The Group Captain is expected to begin the work for Gaganyaan very soon. On August 23, India will be celebrating the second National Space Day, and Mr Shukla is expected to interact with Indians while on Earth on the occasion.
