'I'll miss earth': Shubhanshu Shukla reflects on space, family & mystery of his astronaut number
As Group Captain
prepares for launch aboard
Axiom Mission 4
(Ax-4), he finds himself not swept up by emotion but rooted in precision.
In this final phase — quarantine before liftoff — every minute mirrors the rhythms of orbit.
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Yet beneath the discipline, a quieter current runs: anticipation of the unknown, the emotion of leaving
Earth
behind, and a playful curiosity about the number he'll earn in humanity's celestial roll call.
Late on Tuesday, Shukla answered three specific questions from TOI, where he spoke about the mental space he's in, what excites him most about the days ahead, and what he quietly longs for when the mission ends.
Excerpts:
You're so close to lift-off.
How exactly do you feel?
We are pretty close to launching now. But if you ask me how I feel at this moment, I'd say I'm focused on sticking to the schedule and getting everything done as planned. Even here in quarantine, the training is quite intense—it's designed to reflect the pace and structure of our time aboard the station. So, no big emotions just yet. We're very busy preparing for the mission. As Peggy [Whitson] told me, it's probably on the dry dress day — when we go to the launchpad for rehearsal — that we'll really start to feel the gravity of it all.
What's the most exciting part about going to space? Have you planned anything right after docking?
Everything is going to be tightly scripted. From the minute we dock, right up until we go to sleep, each task is scheduled on our timeline. It's all orchestrated, and we'll be busy performing those activities. But there is something I'm particularly excited about. Once you enter space, every astronaut is given a traveller number—like a unique ID marking your place in the list of humans who've been to orbit.
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That information is currently with my commander, Peggy, and she's keeping it a secret for now! So I'm really looking forward to finding out what number I'll be.
What's the first thing you plan to do when you return to your family?
Honestly, I haven't planned anything specific yet. I imagine being in orbit for 14 days will be a truly novel experience—one that comes with a mix of emotions. Leaving Earth feels a lot like leaving home.
You miss it. You miss your people. So yes, there's already a sense of longing. I haven't thought about exactly what I'll do when I return, but I'm sure that after two weeks up there, I'll know what matters most to me. I'll have a better idea of what I want to do the moment I see them again.
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