India has celebrated another step on its mission to become a space power, after Shubhanshu Shukla became the first astronaut from the country to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday.
Shukla was aboard the private Axiom Space Mission 4, or Ax-4, which lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the latest mission organized by the Texas-based startup in partnership with Elon Musk’s rocket venture SpaceX.
It is expected to dock in the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 7 a.m. ET on Thursday.
The private mission includes decorated former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, as well as Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary – two other spaceflight novices who will become the first from their countries to visit the ISS.
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