Before astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla's space mission, excitement anxiety & a little prayer

Indian Express

4 days ago

For the last few days, the sprawling white single-storeyed Anshu Niwas in one corner of Lucknow's Triveni Nagar has been seeing a steady stream of friends, relatives, well-wishers and the media. They are all there for one reason – to offer their good wishes to the owners of the house, the Shuklas, for their 39-year-old Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu 'Gunjan' Shukla's maiden flight to space.
On June 10 – over 10 months after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) first announced his name as one of four astronauts as part of Axiom Space's fourth commercial mission to the International Space Station – Shubhanshu will take off on a two-week Indo-US mission.
Commandeered by veteran US astronaut Peggy Whitson, the Axiom Mission-4 (Ax-4) mission will take off onboard SpaceX's Falcon-9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, making Shubhanshu only the second Indian to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma's iconic spaceflight onboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft in 1984.
Shubhanshu is currently undergoing mandatory quarantine at the Kennedy Space Centre, and his family back at home is both excited and anxious about the mission, his parents Shambhu Dayal Shukla, a 73-year-old former civil servant, and Asha Shukla, 67, tell The Indian Express.
'We had been hearing about his space journey for a long time, and naturally, there were many questions that came to our minds. But there was no one we could turn to and ask what really happened up there and what he would be doing,' she says.
That anxiety was allayed after a dinner and a conversation with Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe, who happened to be in Lucknow, on May 9. Over the dinner that lasted 3-4 hours, Stibbe, who was part of the historic Axiom-1 (Ax-1) mission to the ISS in 2022, told them in great detail about his own space mission and encouraged the couple to ask him questions.
'He brought along a presentation he made for us,' Shubhanshu's 40-year-old sister Suchi says. 'Over dinner, he told in great detail how they lived, ate, and slept in space. He didn't speak about the challenges he faced. Instead, he told us about the beauty of the journey. His face shone with the happiness of having seen, achieved, and experienced so much.'
Shubhanshu's father Shambhu Dayal, who retired as a joint secretary in 2013 in Lucknow, adds: 'All our worries and doubts have now been put to rest. We are only praying for his safe journey'.
Born in Lucknow on October 10, 1985, Group Captain Shubhanshu is the last of three children and has three older siblings — Nidhi, 43, an MBA graduate and a homemaker and Suchi, a school teacher. He is also the first in his family to join the armed forces, with his family initially encouraging him to take up civil services.
From the premier National Defence Academy, Shubhanshu was commissioned into the fighter stream of the Indian Air Force on June 17, 2006.
'I wanted to ask him to prepare for civil services after his Class 12 exams in 2002,' Shambhu says. 'But a friend of his decided to apply to the National Defence Academy (NDA). When he discovered that he was too old to qualify for the exam, he gave the form to Shubhanshu.'
Shubhanshu married his wife Kamna Shukla, a dentist, in 2009. Kamna is currently in Florida with the couple's six-year-old son to see the launch of the mission.
Over the years, Shubhanshu has served in various parts of the country — including Bhuj, Jodhpur, and Srinagar — and was in Bengaluru when his name was announced for the mission.
Those who know him describe Shubhanshu as 'not reserved but not one to talk to everyone'. 'He respects everyone but prefers to connect only with those he feels comfortable around,' his sister Suchi says.
Even as a child, he was 'very focused and very prompt when it came to his work,' his father Shambhu.
'He had very few close friends, mostly kept indoors and never went out alone to buy anything from the market, so it's unlikely that many people in the neighbourhood knew him well,' he says.
Indeed, in Triveni Nagar, not much is known about Shubhanshu.
'We only found out that Shubhanshu is from our area when we saw it on the news. After speaking to others, we got to know more about him. We had never seen him before and didn't even know he had cleared the NDA,' Rakesh Mishra, a resident of Triveni Nagar, says.
But at Shubhanshu's City Montessori School, it's a different story. His math teacher Nageshwar Prasad, 55, remembers him as a good student.
'Shubhanshu would give equal importance to sports and studies,' Prasad, who also taught Shubhanshu's wife Kamna, says.
Back at the Shuklas, the family says that while they are no longer anxious, they admit to feeling jittery as the date of the take-off approaches. Despite this, they know that their son is not one to stray away from challenges.
'We were initially scared when he said he wanted to join the armed forces. Then we were anxious when he said he would spend over a year training in Russia to become an astronaut, mainly because he's never one to ever go out anywhere alone. But he's adapted himself to challenges,' his proud mother Asha says.
While Shubhanshu's parents had initially planned to travel to Florida to see their son off, plans changed after his mother Asha developed severe spondylitis that made travel difficult. As a result, they take comfort in the little things – such as daily video calls and phone calls that he makes to assure them of his well-being.
'We now plan to hold a puja before his mission,' Shambhu says.