New Delhi: Whenever something came in astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla’s way inside the International Space Station (ISS), he would just crawl around it through the ceiling or across the walls. In space, up was down, and down was up. After his 20-day stay in space, he’s getting reacquainted with gravity back on Earth. He dropped his laptop, expecting it to float. It landed on the carpet, fortunately undamaged.
Shukla, along with his Gaganyaan colleague, group captain Prasanth B.Nair—his back-up crew in the recent US-led Axiom-4 Mission—interacted with the media for the first time Thursday.
He said that the experience that he gained from the mission will be critical for India’s human spaceflight, Gaganyaan, and will also be crucial in building India’s very own space station by 2035.
“The first few days after returning from space were hard. It takes a while for the body to get re-acclimatised to gravity. There was this one time I just left my laptop in the air, hoping it would float, but it ended up on the floor. Thankfully, the floor was carpeted,” Shukla said.
The Axiom-4 Mission piloted by India’s Shukla carried veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson, European mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wiśniewski (Poland) and Tibor Kapu (Hungary), reached the ISS on 26 June initially for a 14-day mission. The mission eventually turned into a 19-day-long itinerary.
“Even though I am older than Shux (Shukla’s call sign), I was happy to be the Lakshman to his Ram,” Nair said, adding, “Through this mission and through our time training, we realised that India’s time has come. There was an age-old saying ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’, we can now add, ‘Jai Vigyaan’ to that.”
Shukla and Nair returned from the US on 17 August.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that with the Axiom-4 Mission, India has proven itself as an equal partner in the global space sector.
“I have been saying that the space economy will be key for India’s future economic growth. The experiments carried out by Shukla, on behalf of India, were all indigenous, but they will benefit the world,” he said.
‘Experience of a lifetime’
Dressed in a blue jacket with the Indian flag patched on his arm, Shukla said that when he first saw India from space, it made him emotional.
Nearly three days after reaching the ISS, Shukla was about to begin his first experiment in space when a colleague from NASA told him that they were passing over India, and asked him if he would like to take a look. And Shukla jumped with excitement.
“For the first few days after reaching the ISS, I was going through an episode of space fog. For three days, I did not even look out the window. But when I saw India from space, it was another feeling. It was lit up in all its glory,” Shukla said with a beam of pride in his eyes.
Adding to Sharma’s famous lines from the Soviet space station, Salyut-7 in 1984, Shukla said, “Aaj bhi Bharat antariksh se saare jahan se accha lagta hai (Even today, India looks the best from space).”
Shukla is now the first Indian to set foot in the ISS and the second to go to space after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma (retired). Nair, who is also one of the Gaganyaan astronaut designates, was Shukla’s backup crew in the mission.
(Edited by Tony Rai)