India’s Shubhanshu Shukla to fly to ISS on June 19 aboard Axiom-4 Mission

The highly anticipated Axiom-4 (Ax-4) commercial spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS), featuring Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, is now scheduled for liftoff on June 19, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on Saturday.

The launch, originally set for June 11 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, faced delays due to a liquid-oxygen leak in the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle and a pressure anomaly in the Russian-built Zvezda service module aboard the ISS. “During a follow-on coordination meeting between ISRO, Axiom Space, and SpaceX, it was confirmed that the liquid oxygen leak observed in the Falcon 9 launch vehicle has been successfully resolved,” ISRO stated. Axiom Space also confirmed they are working with NASA to monitor the Zvezda module issue.

The Ax-4 flight will be SpaceX’s fourth private astronaut mission under the Axiom programme, with a crew of four, including former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson as mission commander. Shubhanshu Shukla will serve as pilot, making this India’s return to crewed spaceflight. Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary will join as mission specialists.

The two-week mission is not only historic for Shukla, but also for Poland and Hungary, marking the first time in years all three nations will have crewed presence aboard the ISS. The Axiom-4 crew will fly aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, launched atop the Falcon 9 rocket.

This flight follows Ax-1 (April 2022), Ax-2 (May 2023), and Ax-3 (January 2024), which have all demonstrated growing global participation in commercial spaceflight. The Ax-4 mission comes just months after Sunita Williams, NASA astronaut of Indian origin, returned from a record-breaking 286-day stay aboard the ISS. With final technical hurdles cleared, the countdown to liftoff is back on, and for India, the Axiom-4 mission marks a new era in human spaceflight.