Chennai: NASA will hold the flight readiness review mission for the AXIOM-4 mission t0 be piloted by Indian Astronaut Subanshu Shukla for the International Space Station (ISS) on June 8.
According to NASA the mission will be launched on June 8, 2025 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Dana Weigel, ISS programe Manager said on May 21 the station programme will hold the flight readiness review for this mission.
Apart from Group Captain Shukla who is the pilot of the Ax-4 mission the other four crew members are Commander Peggy Whitson of the U.S.,Mission Specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, and Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Ax-4 crew aboard a Dragon spacecraft to the ISS from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Sarah Walker, director, Dragon Mission Management, SpaceX, said the teams are currently carrying Dragons final integration campaign.
“We expect to transport the Dragon to our hangar next week to be integrated with the rocket for launch,” she said.
The launch was scheduled for this month but was deferred by a few days due to some testing activites.
Nasa and Isro will host a joint public downlink event to showcase the strength of the international collaboration and the shares commitement to expanding the access to space.
As part of the mission, both NASA and ISRO will conduct five joint science investigations along with two outreach programmes.
It may be noted that ISRO and the Eruopean Space AGency (ESA) have entered into an agreement to collaborate in microgrvity research in the upcoming Axion-4 mission, which will mark India’s first crewed (ISS) mission.
ISRO said it had recently entered into a pact with ESA to cooperate on activities related to Astronaut Training, Mission Implementation and Research Experiments.
This agreement provides an opportunity for undertaking joint microgravity experiments.
In this regard, microgravity research experiments by Indian Principal Investigators (PIs) have been jointly shortlisted by ISRO and ESA for implementation on ISS during Axiom-4 mission:
They were Comparative growth and proteomics responses of cyanobacteria on urea and
nitrate in microgravity, impact of Microgravity on Growth and Yield Parameters in Food Crop
Seeds.
It said currently, these shortlisted microgravity experiments are under various phases of
evaluation in view of safety driven operational philosophy of human spaceflight missions.
Further, ISRO and ESA will be jointly carrying out human research and other scientific and
technology demonstration experiments.
In addition to these, cooperation in microgravity research with other space agencies during
Axiom-4 mission is also being actively pursued.
The field of microgravity research with potential applications in human health research,
physical sciences, material sciences, novel pharmaceutical development and biotechnology
offers significant opportunities to national scientific community.
The Indian Human Space Program, maiden Gaganyaan mission, aims to encourage and
support the Indian scientific community in microgravity research activities through flight
opportunities in ISRO’s missions as well as joint international efforts.
