NASA announced on Tuesday that the Indian astronaut group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla’s AXIOM-4 mission for the International Space Station (ISS) will now be launched on 25 June. This mission is a symbol of return to space for India, Hungary and Poland.
The Ex-4 Mission which was scheduled to launch on the Falcon-9 rocket of SpaceX from Florida, Florida on 25 June at 12:01 pm on 25 June. However, now NASA has announced the new date of launch of the mission.
According to NASA’s statement, ‘NASA, Axiom Space and SpaceX will launch EDT (Indian time at 12:01 pm Indian time) on Wednesday, 2:31 am on Wednesday, 2:31 am.’
The Ex-4 mission is headed by Commander Pegi Whitson, which includes Shubhanshu Shukla as a mission pilot. Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu and Slavos Ujnanski-Vysnievski from Poland are part of the team as a mission specialist.
When to postpone mission
The launch of the Axiaom Mission-4 has been postponed several times. Originally this mission was scheduled to be launched on May 29, but before that the mission was deferred till 8 June due to technical fault. Then postponed for 9, 10 and 11 June. The reason for this delay was said to be liquid oxygen leakage in the booster of Falcon-9 rocket and leakage in the old Russian module of ISS.
The launch of the mission was then set for June 19 and again for 22 June, but after repairing the Russian module, it was re -deferred to evaluate the operation of the ISS. Now NASA has announced the new date of launch of the mission.
The mission will be launched from the launch complex 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will travel to the space station via Falcon-9 rocket, riding in SpaceX’s new dragon spacecraft.
According to NASA, the scheduled docking time is on 26 June, Thursday at 7 am (Indian time 4:30 pm).
What is Axiom-4 mission
Axiom Mission-4 is a private space flight, which is being operated together Achom Space, NASA and SpaceX. In this mission, 4 astronauts will spend 14 days at the International Space Station (ISS), where they will do experiments related to microgravity and biology.