‘Namaskar from space’: Shubhanshu Shukla dials Earth before reaching ISS
Second Indian citizen in space
The 39-year-old, Lucknow-born Shubhanshu Shukla became only the second Indian astronaut to undertake a space flight, 41 years after his icon Rakesh Sharma’s eight-day space odyssey on board the then Soviet Union's Salyut-7 space station in 1984. After multiple delays, Elon Musk's SpaceX launch vehicle with Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon-9 rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:01 PM(IST) carrying mission pilot Shukla, a Group Captain in the Indian Air Force(IAF), former NASA astronaut Commander Peggy Whitson and mission specialists Tibor Kapu of Hungary and Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland. Congratulations poured in from all quarters as the Ax-4 mission astronauts entered Earth's orbit. President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, among others, hailed the space mission. |
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