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Shubhanshu Shukla's mission linked to India's first astronaut Rakesh Sharma: A secret memento, yoga

Shubhanshu Shukla's mission linked to India's first astronaut Rakesh Sharma: A secret memento, yoga

Minta day ago

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla once said Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, India's first astronaut, has impressed him and has been his idol. Sharma travelled to space in 1984. "I was born in 1985...I grew up reading about him in textbooks and listening to his stories from space. I was deeply deeply impressed by him," Shukla said.
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force officer, will become the second Indian astronaut to be in space and the first to join the International Space Station. Shukla will pilot the Axiom Mission-4, which is scheduled to launch into space on June 10 (5:52 pm IST).
He will launch aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft along with three other crew members -- one each from the US, Hungary and Poland.
Shukla's voyage comes four decades after Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma joined a Russian Soyuz spacecraft – Soyuz T-11 – in 1984 for an eight-day stay in orbit.
Shubhanshu Shukla said earlier this year that the first Indian astronaut, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, was actively involved in that process with the Axiom mission crew.
"Right from the process of astronaut selection and to the modalities of finalising what kind of training we need to do and what kind of setup we need to have. So I would say that he is really intertwined in the proceedings of the human spaceflight mission that we were already executing, and we regularly, keep in touch," Shukla said.
He added, 'He [Rakesh Sharma] is kind of a mentor for me who is advising me on a lot of things...how to prepare for this mission.'
Like his "mentor" Rakesh Sharma, Shubhanshu Shukla plans to perform yoga in space.
Rakesh Sharma became the first human to practice yoga in space. He performed aasnaas using a harness that stopped him from floating around. NASA said that "Yoga" experiment aboard Soyuz T-11 could "probably be considered the most curious of the medical experiments."
"In the 'Yoga' experiment, performed by cosmonaut-researcher Sharma, an attempt was made to study the possibility of using yoga exercises during space flight and their effectiveness in preventing harmful effects of weightlessness on the muscular-support apparatus," NASA said in a document from 1985.
Now, 41 years later, Shubhanshu Shukla plans to follow his idol's footsteps.
When asked about performing yoga in space, Shukla said, 'Yes, now that you have said so, I would probably demonstrate a few poses of yoga while we are up on the station.'
Shukla, who has been nicknamed 'Shux', said that practicing yoga in space could offer valuable insights into the physical and mental effects of microgravity on astronauts.
In a press conference on January 31, Shubhanshu Shukla was asked if he is doing anything or flying anything to connect his individual experiences to those of the nations first citizens in space.
Shukla responded, saying that he will be carrying a special memento on his space flight for his mentor Rakesh Sharma. But "it's a secret". He said the special memento would be revealed once he returns from the Axiom-4 mission and meets Sharma, who has guided him throughout the training period.

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Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla on cusp of history to become second Indian in space
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All eyes will be on the sky tomorrow as the rocket carrying Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, and a billion Indian hopes, lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday. Group Captain Shukla will be only the second Indian in space - after Rakesh Sharma more than three decades ago - and the excitement is palpable, but it has already been dampened slightly because the mission has been postponed four times. Top experts working on the Axiom-4 mission, which is a landmark NASA-ISRO collaboration and is being led by the private company Axiom Space, have now hinted that there could be further delays because the weather could play spoilsport and, more importantly, some issues are still being fixed in the Space X Falcon-9 rocket which is being used for the launch. 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And we'll be complete with all our work this evening, and we'll be ready to support launch as early as tomorrow," he said. "Again, I think this shows the difficulty of getting ready. You can always be prepared, but doing the testing, doing the dry runs, doing the activities with the crew to make sure we are really ready is tremendously important because we always learn something," he pointed out. The emphasis, the SpaceX official said, is on ensuring the flight is a safe one. "And I think one of the benefits of flying frequently and having a fleet of spacecraft is that it gives us the opportunity to review data regularly, and it allows us to look for data, look for small things, find things, improve things, and continue to fly safe. I think when you start assuming things are easy and you stop looking and you start just assuming things will go well, that's when trouble occurs, and we're not in that mode. We're continuing to learn and make sure that we are really ready to go fly," he stressed. Weather Concerns The weather in Florida, where the launch is going to be held, has been unpredictable and has been cited as the main reason for the delay from Sunday to Tuesday and now Wednesday - with Thursday being kept as a backup. This was summed up best by Jimmy Taeger, Launch Weather Officer, 45th Weather Squadron, US Space Force, who said at the conference, "It's always fun forecasting in central Florida." "It's quite dicey sometimes. So basically for the morning time period on Wednesday the 11th and also Thursday the 12th, there's just a possibility of seeing some isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms. Typically with the pattern that's going to be set up, we can sometimes have showers and thunderstorms right off the coast first in the mornings, and then later in the day, they tend to push further inland with the sea breeze," he said. "So there's a possibility that some could be just off the coast. It could also be right over the launch pad, which is why there's also that flight through precipitation risk, but it doesn't look like it's going to be widespread. So the POV, that probability violation number, is on the lower end, 20% for Wednesday the 11th and 25% for Thursday the 12th," he added. The winds, Mr Taeger said are pretty strong for the ascent corridor but are expected to weaken. "So that does look better by Wednesday and especially into Thursday, and our precipitation and lightning risk is just going to continue because we have a stalled boundary that's pretty close to where the ascent corridor is, and there's just going to be some lingering showers and thunderstorms. So it will depend upon when it gets closer... but it doesn't look like that boundary is going to go anywhere at this time," he predicted. Musk-Trump Tussle Impact? SpaceX's William Gerstenmaier was also asked whether the very public fallout between US President Donald Trump and the company's founder and CEO Elon Musk would have an impact on the mission, given that it is supplying both the Falcon-9 rocket and the Dragon capsule - which will carry the crew - being used, and he answered that they are focused on the job at hand. "In this environment, it's tremendously important for us to really stay focused on this mission. You know, I described to you how hard these missions are, and when you get complacent and you assume it's easy, problems can occur," he said. "With this Axiom mission, we absolutely need to avoid a lot of this stuff that's happening on the outside and really stay focused on what we're doing today and keep the teams focused on looking at the vehicles, looking at the procedures, looking at the process, make sure that this international crew can have a great time on board the International Space Station, do tremendous science and research, and return safely home to their families," he stressed.

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