Updated 11:15 p.m. Eastern with Axiom Space comment.
LOGAN, Utah — Two Indian astronauts will soon start training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, with one of them flying to the International Space Station on an upcoming private astronaut mission.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced Aug. 2 that two of the four members of its astronaut corps, Shubhanshu Shukla and Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, will go to the United States in the first week of August to begin training for the mission to the ISS.
ISRO said that Shukla had been assigned to the Axiom Space Ax-4 mission to the station, while Nair will train as his backup. Both of the astronauts, called Gaganyatris by ISRO, had completed ISRO’s own training program for spaceflight that included time at the Star City training center in Russia.
The ISRO announcement is one of the first to confirm that an Indian astronaut would go to the ISS on Ax-4. In a July 24 written response to questions from the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, Jitendra Singh, the Indian government minister whose portfolio includes space, also said that Indian astronauts would soon start training for Ax-4.
“ISRO is pursuing an ISRO-NASA joint mission to International Space Station (ISS) wherein one Gaganyaatri from ISRO will undertake space travel to ISS,” he wrote. “This is a collaborative effort of ISRO, NASA and NASA identified private entity i.e. Axiom Space. Recently, ISRO has signed a Space Flight Agreement with Axiom Space for this joint mission to ISS.”
“India, with its rich history in space exploration and clear leadership in technology and entrepreneurship, will be crucial in shaping the domain and advancing humanity’s presence in space,” Matt Ondler, president of Axiom Space, said in an Aug. 3 statement. “We look forward to working together with ISRO on this next mission.”
Plans for the mission date back to a June 2023 joint statement by the U.S. and Indian governments after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with President Joe Biden in Washington, which mentioned training of Indian astronauts in the U.S. for a “joint effort to the International Space Station in 2024.”
A June 17 fact sheet after a meeting of U.S. and Indian diplomats in New Delhi stated that the countries had completed a “Strategic Framework for Human Spaceflight Cooperation” that included “securing a carrier for the first-ever joint effort between NASA and ISRO astronauts at the International Space Station.” The fact sheet did not identify that carrier.
Neither NASA nor ISRO have disclosed details about the framework document completed in June. A NASA spokesperson said in July that the document had not been made public but did not explain why. NASA and Axiom Space have not made any public statements about flying an Indian astronaut on Ax-4.
The ISRO announcement of the training plans did not disclose a projected date for the launch of Ax-4. At a July 26 briefing, Dana Weigel, NASA ISS program manager, said the agency currently scheduled the mission to fly to the station no earlier than this November. “Of course, we’ll adjust if we need to as we look at the manifest,” she added.
However, during sessions of the recent AIAA ASCEND conference in Las Vegas, representatives of South Korean pharmaceutical company Boryung said they expected Ax-4 to launch in 2025. Boryung is an investor in Axiom Space and is flying artwork from Korean students on Ax-4.
