Axiom 4 Mission Launch Live: After several delays, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and the Axiom Mission 4 crew successfully launched to the International Space Station on Wednesday.
The mission, conducted by Nasa, Axiom Space, and SpaceX, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Docking with the ISS is expected at 4:30 PM IST on June 26.
SpaceX confirmed that “all systems are looking good” and that weather conditions were 90% favourable for liftoff.
NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are targeting a 12:01 PM IST launch on Wednesday, June 25, for the fourth private astronaut mission to the ISS—Axiom Mission 4. The liftoff will take place from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will travel aboard a new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
According to Nasa, the spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the ISS around 4:30 PM IST on Thursday, June 26.
Former Nasa astronaut and Axiom Space’s director of human spaceflight, Peggy Whitson, will command the mission. Shubhanshu Shukla, representing ISRO, will serve as the pilot. The two mission specialists are Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, a project astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), and Tibor Kapu from Hungary’s HUNOR program (Hungarian to Orbit).
The Ax-4 mission faced several delays—initially due to bad weather, followed by a fuel leak in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, and later a separate issue involving a leak in the Russian Zvezda module of the ISS.
Nasa said the launch window was finalized after consultation with Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, following repair work in the transfer tunnel at the aft end of the ISS’s Zvezda service module.
Source: TOI