(Drop cap) India’s dream of sending its first astronaut to the world’s biggest space station will soon be realised as IAF Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will fly to the International Space Station on May 29 at 1.03 pm Eastern Time Zone (10.33pm IST), Axiom Space announced on Tuesday.
According to Nasa, Group Capt Shukla, who was trained for the space mission in Russia as well as in the US, will pilot Axiom Mission-4, a private astronaut mission launching aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The mission, which is jointly being undertaken by Nasa and Isro, will be launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
Group Capt Shukla will be accompanied by Peggy Whitson, a former Nasa astronaut, 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 a mission comprising science, outreach and commercial activities. Shukla’s trip to space comes four decades after Rakesh Sharma’s iconic spaceflight onboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft in April 1984.
“Private astronaut missions are an important component of Nasa’s strategy for enabling a robust and competitive commercial economy in low Earth orbit. Private astronaut missions also serve as pathfinders in demonstrating the demand for future commercial space stations,” the US space agency said on X while confirming the launch date.
Isro has shortlisted seven microgravity research experiments proposed by Indian principal investigators from various national R&D labs or academic institutions for implementation on the ISS by the Indian astronaut. These include studying ‘water bears’ — microscopic organisations — to understand how living things adapt to microgravity. According to Isro, the experience will nurture a microgravity research ecosystem back home, leading to the induction of advanced experiments that make up India’s space programme.
Space minister Jitendra Singh said Shukla will focus on ‘space technology, space bio-manufacturing, and bio-astronautics’ during his ISS mission.
“We have a sprouting experiment which tries to sprout green gram or moong and methi or fenugreek seeds, which are believed to have medicinal properties,” Tushar Phadnis, group head for microgravity platforms and research, said at the virtual press conference organised by Axiom. “The idea is not just to stop sprouting it there. The idea is also to see how these India-specific sprouts behave when they come back. They will undergo a lot of analysis in the labs of the respective PIs (principal investigators),” Phadnis said.
Overall, Axiom-4 has a research complement of around 60 scientific studies, including the seven from India. Lucie Low, chief scientist, Axiom Space, reiterated that this will be the most research and science-related activities conducted on an Axiom Space mission aboard the ISS to date.
Experience from the ISS mission will give momentum to India’s first human spaceflight programme ‘Gaganyaan’ and also future manned missions to space.
Director of international govt business at Axiom Space, Pearly Pandya, who is an Indian-American and was born in Ahmedabad, informed the media in Delhi recently that Shukla and his backup, Group Captain Prashanth Nair, are being trained to operate payloads and conduct scientific research in microgravity. The ISS project is an end-to-end commercial mission for Axiom, which will take care of astronaut training, medical operations and help conduct space experiments, she added.
The Ax-4 mission is a significant collaboration between India and the US, announced by PM Narendra Modi during his visit to the US last year.

Axiom Mission 4 crew, from left to right, European Space Agency astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, and Tibor Kapu of Hungary. Photo: X/@NASASpaceOps via PTI

Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla’s mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to be launched on May 29 2025 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Group Captain Shukla will be the pilot of the Axiom-4 mission (Ax-4) and the launch is targeted no earlier than 1:03 p.m. EDT (Eastern Day Time) on May 29, NASA announced on Tuesday.

The Axiom Mission 4 crew will be launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the ISS and will spend up to 14 days at the orbiting laboratory.

Group Captain Shukla, who is also one of the four astronaut-designates selected for Gaganyaan mission of ISRO, will become the first Indian astronaut to go to the ISS, and the first Indian to go to space in the last 40 years.

Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson will command the commercial mission, European Space Agency project astronauts Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary are also part of the crew.

Axiom Space said that the Ax-4 research complement includes around 60 scientific studies and activities representing 31 countries, including the U.S., India, Poland, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Nigeria, UAE, and nations across Europe.

Axiom Space on Tuesday in a press conference shared details on the experiments, microgravity research, and technology demonstrations that will be a part of Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4).

ISRO has already shortlisted seven microgravity research experiments proposed by Indian Principal Investigators (PIs) from various national R&D laboratories and academic institutions for implementation on the ISS.

“On our maiden mission to the ISS we have as set of experiments being investigated by some of the leading academic institutions and research labs from India the experiments range from search of growth of microalgae and cyanobacteria to muscle regeneration experiments, sprouting in space, studying resilience of tardigrades, seeds experiment and human computer interactions in space,” said Tushar Phadnis, Group Head for Microgravity Platforms and Research, ISRO.

Replying to a query on why three of India’s seven experiments are related to food

Mr. Phadnis said, “ISRO would like to explore specifically India centric food for example we have a sprouting experiment to sprout green gram or moong and Fenugreek which is believed to have medicinal properties.”

Image for representation.
| Photo Credit: Getty Image/iStockphoto

Only about one in four public-funded research and development organisations in India give incubation support to start-ups and only one in six provide support to ‘deep tech’ startups. Only 15% collaborated with industry overseas and only half of them opened their facilities to outside researchers and students, say the findings of a study commissioned by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor and executed by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Centre for Technology, Innovation, and Economic Research.

The study, via a detailed questionnaire, asked labs to rate themselves and supply data on 62 parameters such as their spend on R&D, number of young scientists, patents filed, technologies developed, participation of women scientists and their contribution to ‘national missions’ such as Deep Ocean Mission, National Quantum Mission, etc.

Labs of the ‘strategic sector’ such as those belonging to defence research, space, atomic energy research — all of which constitute the lion’s share of India’s overall Research and Development (R&D) spend — were excluded from the study due to the “sensitive nature of their work”. The labs studied were those affiliated to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Department of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, etc.

The Central government expenditure on R&D was around ₹55,685 crore in 2020-21, the figure cited in the study and the latest available. Excluding the expenditure of the strategic departments like DRDO (Defence), DAE (Atomic energy) and DoS (Space), the spending by key scientific agencies and other Central government departments was ₹24,587 crore.

Around 25% of the participating institutions reported spending between 75% and 100% of their budget on R&D. The organizations that reported less than the median share of spending on R&D and S&T (Science and Technology) in the overall budget were largely from ICAR (Agricultural research), CSIR, ICMR (Medical research), Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda and traditional medicine) and DST (Science and Technology).

Staff strength down

A large number of labs/institutes reported a decrease in the number of permanent staff in 2022-23 compared to the previous year and an increased reliance — from 17,234 to 19,625 — on contractual staff.

The median share of young researchers increased in 2022-23 to around 58 per cent from 54 per cent in the previous year. In the previous exercise, for around 193 organisations that had participated, this number was around 63 per cent to 65 per cent for the period from 2017-18 to 2019-20.

“This is the second time that we have had such an analysis. What we intend is that the data from such a study be closely analysed by institutions so that they can identify areas of improvement,” said Dr. Ajay Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser, “Overall, several researchers seem to have oriented themselves from being centres of scientific inquiry to innovation centres. I see that as a positive development. Academia and product innovation must go hand in hand.”

As part of its recommendation, the report advocates that every lab should be “mandated to review their existing mandates” and align themselves to Viksit Bharat goals. The mandate should focus on “critical technologies” as directed by the government and be taken on a “war footing” by public-funded R&D organisations. They should work closely with industry as well as with each other.