Historic lift-off: First Indian astronaut to join US-India ISS mission in 2025

The groundbreaking US-India joint space mission, marking the historic journey of the first Indian citizen to the International Space Station (ISS), is set to launch between April and June 2025.

The news was provided by Axiom Space's director of international business cooperation, Perli Pandya, Caliber.Az reports citing Russian media.

"The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) and NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) astronaut mission will lift off between April and June next year," Pandya noted. "As an Indian-American woman, this mission is deeply meaningful for me — a chance to bring together two worlds and unite the Indian diaspora on a global stage," she added, emphasizing the significance of the collaboration.

This monumental journey to the ISS will deploy the US SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, paired with the advanced Crew Dragon spacecraft. Indian astronauts Shubhanshu Shukla and his backup, Balakrishnan Nair, are currently training in the United States. The two were previously part of a quartet of Indian pilots who completed rigorous training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia. Shukla and Nair are proud members of India’s first space squad, assembled to spearhead the nation's inaugural manned spaceflight, now scheduled for 2026.

Pandya also highlighted the progress of the astronaut training program in the United States: "Their training is going very well. They are gaining immense knowledge, mastering NASA's stringent requirements, and learning about ISS operations from the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency," she noted.

If successful, Shubhanshu Shukla will become the first Indian citizen on the ISS, though not the first Indian in space — that honour belongs to Rakesh Sharma, who orbited aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-11 spacecraft in April 1984. Still, the central mission for both Shukla and Nair is to prepare diligently for India’s ambitious national manned flight project, currently under the meticulous watch of ISRO.

The Gaganyaan project, a vision announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2018, originally aimed to send India's first national crew into space by August 2022, to coincide with the country's 75th anniversary of independence from British rule. Named "Gaganyaan," which translates from Sanskrit as "celestial ship," the project faced delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which paused progress in March 2020.

ISRO tentatively rescheduled the mission for 2025 and, more recently, announced that it would need until 2026 to complete all preparations. Meanwhile, an unmanned test flight of the Gaganyaan spacecraft is anticipated in December 2024. A pioneering "female robot" named Vyommitra will be aboard to test the spacecraft’s life support systems, a crucial step toward realizing India’s dream of human spaceflight.

By Tamilla Hasanova