India May Have Been To Mars And Moon, But An Indian Hasn't Been In Space For 41 Years: Elon Musk Just Changed That

Elon Musk's commercial space exploration company SpaceX launched its new Dragon spacecraft on its debut as part of the Ax-4 mission to the International Space Station on Tuesday.

However, the mission is also significant for India as the mission marks the first time in over 40 years that an Indian astronaut has been sent to space since 1984's Soviet Interkosmos mission, which took Indian Air Force Officer and Astronaut Rakesh Sharma to space.

Indian Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla is a part of the 4-person crew, led by Axiom Space's Director of Human Spaceflight Peggy Whitson. The crew also includes Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu. The mission comes in despite Musk's calls to deorbit the International Space Station over safety concerns.

The crew will spend over two weeks at the ISS before coming back down to Earth after conducting over 60 experiments in Space. The mission was originally supposed to launch on June 12, but a propellant leak forced SpaceX and Axiom Space to delay the launch.

A Look Back At India's Space Ventures

India has had an active space program for a while, with the country's Space Agency, ISRO, or Indian Space Research Organization, having conducted multiple successful space missions.

The country launched the Chandrayaan-1, the country's maiden lunar probe, in 2008. It was the first Spacecraft developed entirely by the country. It was inserted into the lunar orbit on November 8, 2008. ISRO launched Chandrayaan-2, which crashed on the lunar surface in 2019, as well as Chandrayaan-3, which landed on the Moon's surface in 2023.

Besides this, the country also launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, where ISRO launched its first probe towards the planet Mars in 2013. The probe has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2014, and the agency lost contact with the probe in April 2022.

The mission was India's first interplanetary spaceflight and made ISRO only the fourth Agency to send a rover to Mars.

The country also plans on launching its first-ever human space flight vehicle, the Gaganyaan-1. The spacecraft is slated to launch in 2027 and will serve as the basis of ISRO's Human Space Flight Programme.

Check out more of Benzinga's Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link.

Read Next:

• Elon Musk’s SpaceX Suffers Major Setback As Starship Rocket Explodes In Static Fire Test

Photo courtesy: Shutterstock