Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla has expressed confidence that India will soon send astronauts to space from its own soil, capsule, and rocket, following his successful mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Speaking at a press conference here, Group Captain Shukla described his experience aboard the ISS as “invaluable and a lot better than any training”.
“No matter how much training you have done, even after that, when you sit in the rocket and the engines ignite, when they catch fire, I think it is a very different feeling. I had not imagined how it would feel, and I was actually running behind the rocket for the first few seconds, and it took me some time to catch up to it. From that moment until the time we splashed down, the experience was unbelievable. It was so exciting and so amazing that I have really been struggling to find words to convey it to you, so that you can live that experience through my words,” he said.
Shukla, who flew on the Axiom-4 mission, highlighted the lessons learned as being crucial for India’s own Gaganyaan mission. Reflecting on the country’s space journey, he recalled the iconic words of Rakesh Sharma in 1984: India looks “saare jahaan se achcha (better than the entire world)” even today.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh emphasised India’s growing global stature in space exploration, noting that the Department of Space has been operational for nearly 70 years and ISRO was officially founded in 1969. “We have started following the strategies which are followed by the rest of the world. Now, our benchmarks are global benchmarks, our strategies are global, and the parameters that we are seeking to live up to are global,” he said.
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Group Captain Prasanth B Nair, a member of India’s Gaganyaan crew, drew a parallel between the mission and the Ramayana. “A few months from now, we are going to have Diwali. That is the time when Ram ji entered Ayodhya. Over here right now, if I can call myself Lakshman... even though I am older than 'Shuks' (Shukla), I would love to be Lakshman to this Ram any day. But let's remember Ram and Lakshman got a lot of help from the entire 'vanar sena', that is our fantastic ISRO team... otherwise it would not have been possible,” he said.
Shukla expressed gratitude to the government, ISRO, and all those involved in making the mission a success. “I would also like to thank everyone who helped bring this mission to the population of our country, making it accessible for everyone to view. In the end, I would like to thank each and every citizen of this country who behaved in a way that made it feel like they actually owned this mission. I truly felt that this was a mission for the entire nation,” he said.
The mission details included a two-week journey aboard the Crew Dragon atop a Falcon 9 vehicle. The launch took place from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with recovery off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean. Crew Dragon is one of three vehicles currently capable of carrying humans to space. Shukla also trained on the Soyuz, launched from Russia, and described the ISS as “an orbiting laboratory that has been operational since 2000. It has been conducting cutting-edge science and is actually a perfect example of international collaboration.”
Shukla is the first Indian astronaut to reach the ISS, marking a milestone in the country’s space exploration efforts.
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