India's Shubhanshu Shukla is deep into training for his space mission next year. The Wing Commander at the Indian Air Force is currently in the US preparing for his flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring of 2025. He is part of Axiom Space's Axiom-4 or Ax-4 mission which is the company's fourth private mission in collaboration with NASA and SpaceX.

In a post on X, former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who now works with Axiom Space said that the training is in full swing. She also revealed that the three other astronauts who will accompany her on the space journey were also introduced to SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

"Training for Ax-4 has begun and I already feel right at home. After a comprehensive onboarding process in Houston we traveled to @SpaceX in Hawthorne for suit measurements and pressurization tests. The crew also had their first introduction to Dragon!" Whitson captioned her post. The post had a picture of the crew members seated inside the four-person Dragon capsule.

The Ax-4 crew, apart from Shukla and Whitson also includes Sławosz Uznański from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary. These two will serve as mission specialists while Shukla and Whitson will be mission pilot and mission commander, respectively. Another Indian astronaut candidate, Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, is also training alongside Shukla for the mission as he is the backup in case one crew members withdraws from the flight for some reason.

Shukla and Nair arrived at Houston, Texas in the first week of August. SpaceX was originally scheduled to launch the crew in October but the mission got delayed due to other priorities.

But when the launch is complete, Shukla will be the first Indian to visit the space station. He will spend up to two weeks aboard the orbiting lab with possible extensions and also conduct a few experiments during his stay. Meanwhile, the astronauts will continue training to learn how to live in microgravity environment and learn about the potential emergency situations and how to handle them.

Source: mashable