Shubhanshu Shukla Receives Ashoka Chakra At Republic Day Celebrations

President Droupadi Murmu confered Ashoka Chakra to Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, who created history by becoming the first Indian to visit the International Space Station (ISS), has been honoured with the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry award. In June last year, Group Captain Shukla, 41, also became the second Indian to have gone to space. He flew to the ISS as part of the Axiom-4 mission. The Indian Air Force (IAF) test pilot's 18-day space odyssey came 41 years after Rakesh Sharma flew aboard a Russian Soyuz in 1984. As a fighter pilot, Group Captain Shukla has an impressive record of 2,000 hours of flight experience across various aircraft, including the Sukhoi-30MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier, and An-32.