Axiom 4 Mission: Shubhanshu Shukla's parents get emotional, hold Tiranga as Indian astronaut reaches ISS | Video

As the Axiom-4 Mission's Dragon capsule, carrying Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and three crewmates, successfully docked with the International Space Station, it marked a proud and emotional milestone --not just in global space exploration, but for one family watching thousands of kilometres away in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force officer and the mission’s pilot, is leading India’s return to space after more than four decades. Watching the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft achieve a successful docking with the ISS, his parents got emotional, a video shared by news agency PTI showed.

In another video shared by ANI, his parents, along with school members of Group Captain Shukla, held the Tricolour in their hands.

Shukla and his team launched into space aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, propelled by a Falcon 9 rocket, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday. The crew is set to spend 14 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where they will carry out scientific experiments in a microgravity environment.

This mission marks a historic milestone, as Shukla becomes only the second Indian to journey into space after Rakesh Sharma, and the first to reach the ISS in nearly four decades. Sharma had spent eight days in orbit aboard the Soviet Union’s Salyut-7 space station back in 1984.

Before liftoff, Shukla had expressed his wish that the mission would motivate young minds, much like Sharma’s spaceflight had inspired an earlier generation.

Sending a message from orbit, Shukla described the experience of adjusting to microgravity as “like learning to live again, like a baby,” and said that floating in space felt “amazing.” Recalling the 30-day quarantine before launch, he added, “All I could think was — just let us go.”

Along with Shukla, aboard the spacecraft are mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary, and commander Peggy Whitson of the United States, a former NASA astronaut who now works for the company Axiom Space.