Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary launched on first space station mission
The Axiom-4 crew, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary, Commander Peggy Whitson of the U.S., and Mission Specialist Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, react as they greet their family members before their mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., June 24, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson was launched on the fifth spaceflight of her career early on Wednesday, joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary heading for their countries' first visit to the International Space Station.
The astronaut team lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at about 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT), beginning the latest mission organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk's rocket venture SpaceX.
The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket.
Live video showed the towering spacecraft streaking into the night sky over Florida's Atlantic coast trailed by a brilliant yellowish plume of fiery exhaust.
It marked the first Crew Dragon flight since Musk briefly threatened to decommission the spacecraft after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cancel Musk's government contracts in a high-profile political feud between the two men earlier this month.
Axiom 4's autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the ISS after a flight of about 28 hours, then dock with the outpost as the two vehicles soar together in orbit some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
If all goes according to plan, the Axiom 4 crew will be welcomed aboard the orbiting space laboratory Thursday morning by its seven current resident occupants - three astronauts from the U.S., one from Japan and three cosmonauts from Russia.
Whitson, 65, and her three Axiom 4 crewmates - Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary - are slated to spend 14 days aboard the space station conducting microgravity research.
The mission stands as the fourth such flight since 2022 arranged by Axiom as the Houston-headquartered company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into Earth orbit.
For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked a return to human spaceflight after more than 40 years and the first mission to send astronauts from each of those three countries to the International Space Station.
The Axiom 4 participation of Shukla, an Indian air force pilot, is seen by India's own space program as a kind of precursor to the debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, planned for 2027.
The Axiom 4 crew is led by Whitson, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included her tenure as the first woman to serve as the U.S. space agency's chief astronaut. She also was the first woman to command an ISS expedition and the first to do so twice.
Now a consultant and director of human spaceflight for Axiom, she has logged a career total of 675 days in space, a U.S. record, during three NASA missions and a fourth flight to space as commander of the Axiom 2 mission in 2023.
The Axiom 4 mission was previously scheduled for liftoff on Tuesday before a forecast of unsuitable weather forced a 24-hour postponement.
(Reporting by Steve Nesius in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Joey Roulette in Washington; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
30 minutes ago
- The Sun
India, Poland, Hungary make spaceflight comeback with ISS mission
CAPE CANAVERAL: A US commercial mission carrying crew from India, Poland and Hungary blasted off to the International Space Station Wednesday, taking astronauts from these countries to space for the first time in decades. Axiom Mission 4, or Ax-4, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:31 am (0631 GMT), with a brand-new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule riding atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The vehicle is scheduled to dock with the orbital lab on Thursday at approximately 1100 GMT and remain there for up to 14 days. Aboard the spacecraft were pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India; mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary; and commander Peggy Whitson of the United States, a former NASA astronaut who now works for the company Axiom Space, which organizes private spaceflights, among other things. The last time India, Poland or Hungary sent people to space, their current crop of astronauts had not yet been born -- and back then they were called cosmonauts, as they all flew on Soviet missions before the fall of the Iron Curtain. 'I carry with me not just instruments and equipment, but the hopes and dreams of a billion hearts,' said Shukla, 39, at a recent news conference. He became the first Indian in space since Rakesh Sharma, an air force pilot who traveled to the Salyut 7 space station in 1984 as part of a Soviet-led initiative to help allied countries access space. India's space agency, ISRO, sees this flight as a key stepping stone toward its own maiden crewed mission, planned for 2027 under the Gaganyaan program, meaning 'sky craft' in Hindi. Indian science and technology minister Jitendra Singh congratulated Shukla soon after lift-off. 'Indeed a proud moment for India!' he wrote on X. While aboard the ISS, Shukla is set to speak with a high-profile Indian VIP -- widely speculated in Indian media to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- in a soft-power moment aimed at stoking national pride. All three countries are footing the bill for their astronauts. Hungary announced in 2022 it was paying $100 million for its seat, according to India and Poland have not disclosed how much they're spending. Space spat The Ax-4 launch comes after multiple issues delayed the mission, originally slated for early June. It also follows an explosive online spat between US President Donald Trump and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, the world's richest person and, until recently, Trump's ally and advisor. Trump threatened to yank SpaceX's federal contracts -- worth tens of billions of dollars -- prompting Musk to threaten an early retirement of Dragon, the only US spacecraft currently certified to carry astronauts to the ISS. Musk walked back the threat a few hours later and in the days that followed, sought to distance himself further, writing on X that he had gone 'too far.' Any rupture between SpaceX and the US government would be massively disruptive, given NASA and the Pentagon's reliance on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy to send up crew, cargo, satellites and probes. But for now, analysts believe both sides are too entangled to risk a serious break. The Ax-4 flight marks the debut of the fifth and final Crew Dragon vehicle, which will be named once it reaches orbit, joining Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance and Freedom in the active fleet. SpaceX ultimately plans to phase out its current vehicles in the 2030s in favor of Starship, its giant next-generation rocket currently in development. Ax-4 will carry out around 60 experiments, including studies on microalgae, sprouting salad seeds, and how well microscopic creatures called tardigrades survive in space.
The Star
5 hours ago
- The Star
Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary launched on first space station mission
The Axiom-4 crew, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary, Commander Peggy Whitson of the U.S., and Mission Specialist Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, react as they greet their family members before their mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., June 24, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson was launched on the fifth spaceflight of her career early on Wednesday, joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary heading for their countries' first visit to the International Space Station. The astronaut team lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at about 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT), beginning the latest mission organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk's rocket venture SpaceX. The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. Live video showed the towering spacecraft streaking into the night sky over Florida's Atlantic coast trailed by a brilliant yellowish plume of fiery exhaust. It marked the first Crew Dragon flight since Musk briefly threatened to decommission the spacecraft after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cancel Musk's government contracts in a high-profile political feud between the two men earlier this month. Axiom 4's autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the ISS after a flight of about 28 hours, then dock with the outpost as the two vehicles soar together in orbit some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. If all goes according to plan, the Axiom 4 crew will be welcomed aboard the orbiting space laboratory Thursday morning by its seven current resident occupants - three astronauts from the U.S., one from Japan and three cosmonauts from Russia. Whitson, 65, and her three Axiom 4 crewmates - Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary - are slated to spend 14 days aboard the space station conducting microgravity research. The mission stands as the fourth such flight since 2022 arranged by Axiom as the Houston-headquartered company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into Earth orbit. For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked a return to human spaceflight after more than 40 years and the first mission to send astronauts from each of those three countries to the International Space Station. The Axiom 4 participation of Shukla, an Indian air force pilot, is seen by India's own space program as a kind of precursor to the debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, planned for 2027. The Axiom 4 crew is led by Whitson, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included her tenure as the first woman to serve as the U.S. space agency's chief astronaut. She also was the first woman to command an ISS expedition and the first to do so twice. Now a consultant and director of human spaceflight for Axiom, she has logged a career total of 675 days in space, a U.S. record, during three NASA missions and a fourth flight to space as commander of the Axiom 2 mission in 2023. The Axiom 4 mission was previously scheduled for liftoff on Tuesday before a forecast of unsuitable weather forced a 24-hour postponement. (Reporting by Steve Nesius in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Joey Roulette in Washington; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
Free Malaysia Today
8 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Vera Rubin observatory reveals stunning first images
The first images of deep space captured by the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile are revealed in Santiago. (AFP pic) WASHINGTON : Breathtaking stellar nurseries, a sprawling stretch of cosmos teeming with millions of galaxies, and thousands of newly discovered asteroids were revealed Monday in the first deep space images captured by the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile. More than two decades in the making, the US$800 million US-funded telescope sits atop Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One debut image is a composite of 678 exposures taken over seven hours, capturing the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae – both several thousand light-years from Earth – glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. It reveals these birth places of stars in unprecedented detail, with previously faint or invisible features now clearly visible. Another, dubbed 'The Cosmic Treasure Chest,' shows the universe 'teeming with stars and galaxies – the seemingly empty black pockets of space between stars in the night sky when you look at it with unaided eyes, are transformed here into these glittering tapestries,' said Zeljko Ivezic, director of Rubin construction. Spiral, elliptical, and clustered galaxies appear in vivid reds, blues, and oranges. These colours reveal key details such as distance and size with unmatched precision, helping scientists better understand the universe's expansion history. The colours don't directly match what the naked eye would see, explained scientist Federica Bianco, since the telescope captures a far broader range of wavelengths. Instead, they are representational: infrared is mapped to red to represent cooler objects, while ultraviolet is mapped to blue and indicates warmer ones. 10-year flagship project An interactive version of the image is now available on the Rubin Observatory's website. 'One of the things that is very fun is that if you zoom in and you look at one of the fuzzy galaxies there, you might be the first person to be paying attention to that fuzzy blob,' said Clare Higgs, education and public outreach science lead. The observatory features an advanced 8.4-metre telescope and the largest digital camera ever built, supported by a powerful data system transferring 20 terabytes each night. Roughly the size of a car, the camera captures 3,200-megapixel images. It would take 400 ultra-high-definition televisions stacked together to view a single Rubin image at full resolution. Later this year, the observatory will launch its flagship project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Over the next decade, it will scan the night sky nightly, detecting even the subtlest changes with unmatched precision. Named after pioneering American astronomer Vera C. Rubin – whose research provided the first conclusive evidence for dark matter – the observatory continues her legacy by making dark matter a central focus of its mission. Dark energy, an equally mysterious and immensely powerful force, is believed to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe. Together, dark matter and dark energy are thought to make up 95% of the cosmos, yet their true nature remains unknown. 'By observing up to 20 billion galaxies, we'll study how light from those distant galaxies has reached us – and nearly every galaxy's light has been bent by the gravitational interaction of dark matter that pervades the universe,' said scientist Aaron Roodman. This, he added, will help illuminate these cosmic mysteries. A joint initiative of the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, the observatory is also considered one of the most powerful tools ever built for planetary defence. In just 10 hours of observation, Rubin discovered 2,104 previously unknown asteroids in our solar system, including seven near-Earth objects – none of which pose a threat. All other ground- and space-based observatories combined discover about 20,000 new asteroids per year. Chilean pride Chile hosts telescopes from more than 30 countries, including some of the most advanced astronomical instruments in the world – among them the ALMA Observatory, the most powerful radio telescope on Earth. Cerro Tololo Observatory helped achieve the landmark discovery of the universe's accelerating expansion – a breakthrough that earned the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Another major project, the Extremely Large Telescope, is slated to begin operations in 2027 and promises to probe previously unreachable cosmic distances.
