NEW DELHI: India celebrated on Wednesday the launch of the Axiom-4 mission, which has taken off to the International Space Station with a crew including the first Indian astronaut in 41 years.

Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday morning, the 14-day mission is a collaboration between American startup Axiom Space, NASA, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule carried the four-member team into orbit.

A private spaceflight, it is led by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, with Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force pilot responsible for flying the spacecraft through launch, orbital insertion, docking with the ISS, undocking, re-entry, and landing.

Another two members of the crew are Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski — a European Space Agency astronaut and the second Polish national in orbit, who will conduct science experiments in microgravity — and Tibor Kapu, a Hungarian mechanical engineer who will perform experiments in space health.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media to wish “all the success” to Shukla and the other astronauts on the Axiom-4 mission.

“The Indian Astronaut, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla is on the way to become the first Indian to go to (the) International Space Station,” Modi said. “He carries with him the wishes, hopes and aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians.”

Shukla is the second Indian national in space, after Rakesh Sharma, who flew aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz T-11 in 1984 and spent seven days and 21 hours aboard the Salyut 7 space station.

“We are proud and happy to see Shubhanshu Shukla become the second Indian to travel to space, this time as part of the Axiom-4 Mission. This journey is a testament to the growing global footprint of India in space exploration and is a stepping stone to what we want to achieve with Gaganyaan, our own indigenous human spaceflight program,” Lt. Gen. AK Bhatt (retd.), director general of the Indian Space Association, told reporters.

India’s own first human spaceflight aboard the Gaganyaan spacecraft is planned for 2027. So far, only three countries — Russia, the US and China — have sent humans into space on their own spacecraft.

“India is now in the final stages of preparation for the Gaganyaan mission, with firms like Larsen and Toubro, Tata and Ananth Technologies playing a critical role alongside our vibrant startups,” Bhatt said.

“If all goes as planned, we are just one or two years away from realizing the dream of sending Indian astronauts to space on an entirely indigenous platform. The success of missions like Axiom-4 inspires our ecosystem and strengthens our resolve to make India a leading force in the new era of space exploration.”

Shukla, 39, was chosen to take part in the Axiom-4 mission by the Indian Space Research Organization, which is responsible for the country’s space research and exploration activities and is the agency preparing the Gaganyaan mission.

Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh told Indian news agency ANI that the offer for an Indian astronaut to take part in Axiom-4 was presented during Modi’s visit to the US in 2023.

“We had four Air Force officers who were already undergoing training for Gaganyaan — Shubhanshu being the youngest of the four. So, the choice had to zero down on one of them. Finally, Shubhanshu’s name was picked up and (the) standby was Nair (Gp. Capt. Prasanth Nair),” Singh said.

“The Americans were equally keen to have an Indian onboard. In other words, it means that they, today more than ever before, realize the importance of India’s potential, India’s talent and India’s capacity to contribute.”

For the past few years, India has been establishing its position in the global space industry.

In January 2025, it became the fourth country to perform space docking, connecting two spacecraft in orbit. Codenamed Space Docking Experiment, or SpaDeX, the mission involved deploying two small spacecraft, each weighing about 220 kg, into an orbit approximately 470 km above Earth.

In August 2023, ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 moon rover made history by landing on the lunar surface, making India the first country to land near the lunar south pole and the fourth to land on the moon, after the US, the Soviet Union, and China.

A month later, it launched Aditya-L1 in 2023 — the country’s first solar observation mission, and the world’s second after the US Parker Solar Probe in 2021.