Very proud of him, want him to be in the moment, says astronaut's IISc MTech guide
1
2
Kolkata: "I want
Shubhanshu Shukla
to be in the moment," said Aloke Kumar, assistant professor at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, after watching SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
As mission pilot, Shukla will steer Dragon to dock with the International Space Station on Thursday afternoon. Kumar, an alumnus of South Point School and IIT Kharagpur, is Shukla's guide in the thesis-based master's in Mechanical Engineering that he is pursuing at IISc.
"Once the Dragon docks with the ISS, Shukla deserves to soak in the moment. He, along with Angad Pratap, Prashant Nair, and Ajit Krishnan, who were selected for the
Gaganyaan mission
, are all exceptional professionals.
Shukla is extremely motivated. He puts in as much effort in his academic pursuit as a 21-year-old student," the mentor said. Gaganyaan, India's maiden space flight mission, is scheduled sometime in 2027.
The four Indian Air Force test pilots pursued their MTech at IISc. The faculty at IISc has been conducting the academic training of the astronaut designates for the Gaganyaan mission after they returned from the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia, where they underwent mission-oriented training.
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"All the four are part of an elite group. Before the training for the Axiom-4 mission at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Shukla was at the laboratory, day in and day out. The training delayed the completion of his thesis. But I am confident he will complete it before the Gaganyaan mission," said Kumar, who did his PhD at Purdue University in Indiana, US. He returned to India in 2017 after joining IISc.
Group captain Shukla is a combat leader and seasoned test pilot with about 2,000 hours of flying experience in various aircraft, including the Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier 228, and An-32.
While Shukla is the Axiom-4 mission pilot, the mission is led by Commander Peggy Whitson, with Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu and Poland's Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski as mission specialists.
Post docking, the crew members will spend 14 days onboard the ISS conducting science, outreach, and commercial activities.
"It will be a very busy fortnight for Shukla, but I hope he gets to enjoy his moment. I feel very proud of his achievement of being the first Indian to reach the ISS and the second Indian to venture into space," said Kumar, who felt the goosepimples when he looked skyward. "He was right next to me when we clicked the selfie. And now he is in ISS, 408 km away from Earth!"
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