Chennai: Carrying the hopes and dreams of billions, the Axiom-4 Mission piloted by decorated Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, along with three other crew
members to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 14-day experiment, lifts off from Kennedy Space Centre Florida at 12.01 pm IST (02.31 EDT) on Wednesday onboard the Space Dragon Aircraft.
After about a 28 hour flight duration, the four crew from India, US, Hungary and Poland, will
dock at ISS at 7.00 am tomorrow.
The mission lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The crew embarked on a travel to the orbiting laboratory on the new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft after launching on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.
The targeted docking time is approximately 7 a.m. Thursday, June 26, NASA said.
"NASA will provide more details and its coverage information shortly", it said.
The historic and prestigious mission in association with NASA will herald a new milestone in India's chequered space journey that would paveway for exploring new horizons as it comes in the backdrop of India's highly successful three Lunar Missions and the Spadex experimental docking mission that enabled India to become the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to master the docking and undocking technology in space.
This AX-4 mission will be the key for India's first human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, planned one or two years after testing unmanned missions and achieving the ambitious target of setting up the Bharatiya Antarkshiya Space Station by 2040.
After suffering multiple postponements, six to be precise, due to various factors, including adverse weather conditions, LOX leaks and repair works at ISS ever since the first takeoffwas scheduled on May 29, the rocket took off majestically from the launch pad with a textbook launch.
Scientists at NASA, Axiom Space, SpaceX and ISRO, after watching the trajectory of the flight to ensure that the crew was docked tomorrow as planned to conduct nearly 60 experiments at ISS, including seven microgravity experiments from ISRO.
The four-member crew was in quarantine in Florida before they embarked on the mission, and the ISS station is now ready to receive them.
After being deferred repeatedly, it was scheduled for a June 22 launch but was deferred again as the space agency required additional time to continue evaluating ISS operations after recent repair work in the aft (backmost ) segment of the orbital laboratory’s Zvezda service module.
Because of the space station’s interconnected and interdependent systems, NASA wants to ensure the station is ready for additional crew members, and the agency is taking the time necessary to review data.
This milestone will herald India’s return to human spaceflight after more than four decades, after Rakesh Sharma’s iconic 1984 mission aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft.
