Indian Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla's Space Flight Postponed To June 10

Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will have to wait longer for his journey to space.

The lift-off for the Axiom-4 mission has been postponed by two days and will now take place at 5.52 PM (India time) on June 10. This was announced by Axiom Space on Tuesday.

Group Captain Shukla is currently in the pre-launch mandatory quarantine at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to assess his health, and he is healthy and fit to fly.

The launch was earlier scheduled for liftoff 'no earlier than' June 8, 2025, at 6.41 pm, and this is the second postponement of this mission, which is a landmark NASA-ISRO collaboration. While no reason has been officially announced, a source said the delay is to "to account for weather during vehicle transportation and completing final processing of the vehicle ahead of launch".

The first postponement from the original date of May 29 took place as the SpaceX Dragon crew module developed some glitches. Space flights involving humans are always undertaken only when all systems are fully ready, and delays are not uncommon.

Incidentally, unlike the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which gives exact dates and times for the liftoff of its rockets, NASA uses the safe phraseology of 'no earlier than ...', giving itself some leeway.

Group Captain Shukla is scheduled to pilot the Axiom-4 mission, a private astronaut mission that will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In a statement, Axiom Space said, "the launch of the Axiom-4 crew will take place from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida".

His travel to space comes four decades after Rakesh Sharma's iconic spaceflight on board Russia's Soyuz spacecraft in 1984, making it a historic mission for India. It is also important as it will help with India's space flight programme and the Gaganyaan mission.

Group Captain Shukla will be accompanied by Peggy Whitson - a former NASA astronaut and mission commander - Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary. Once docked, the astronauts are scheduled to spend up to 14 days aboard the orbiting laboratory, conducting science, outreach and commercial activities.