Explained: What The Axiom-4 Mission Aims To Achieve At The International Space Station

At exactly 12:01 pm IST on Wednesday, Shubhanshu Shukla and his three crewmates lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, onboard SpaceX's Falcon-9 rocket. Born in Lucknow in 1985, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla graduated from the National Defence Academy and was commissioned into the Indian Air Force in 2006. He was selected in 2019 for India's Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme and later chosen as the pilot for AXIOM-4. He will be the first Indian astronaut to travel to the International Space Station, a journey that comes four decades after Rakesh Sharma spent eight days in orbit aboard the then Soviet Union's Salyut-7 space station in 1984.