NEW DELHI: Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla on Friday said he and fellow astronauts on the International Space Station relished ‘aam ras’, ‘gajar ka halwa’, ‘moong dal halwa’ and delicacies from other countries as he completed a week on board the orbital lab.
Shukla, who docked at the ISS on June 26 as part of the Axiom-4 mission, completed a week on the ISS and got a day off, which he spent connecting with family and friends back on Earth.
The Axiom-4 (Ax-4) crew, which includes Shukla and three other astronauts, completed 113 orbits around the Earth by the end of July 3, clocking over 4.66 million km, which is equivalent to nearly 12 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
“It was a good moment. We got food from different countries and got to share it with all the crew,” Shukla, who has the call sign ‘Shux’, said in a brief interaction with scientists at the URSC, Bengaluru over HAM radio connection.
On Thursday, Shukla also became the Indian astronaut with the longest stay in space, surpassing the record of his mentor Rakesh Sharma, who spent seven days, 21 hours and 40 minutes in space as part of the Soviet Interkosmos programme in 1984. As of Thursday, Shukla has spent nine days in space. He said the most exciting part of the mission was looking back at Earth from the vantage point of the International Space Station.
Shukla said working with people from different countries too was an exciting experience.
Sharing his experience of the launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, Shukla said, “The rocket launch was very dynamic, it was very fast. As you go higher, you go faster and the accelerations were quite high.”
The Axiom-4 mission has veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson as commander, Shukla as pilot, and Polish astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski and Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu as mission specialists.
An Axiom Space statement said that in just seven days, the Ax-4 astronauts have already made significant contributions to scientific research.
“Peggy has been involved in cancer research using microgravity to study how tumour cells behave in space, work that is helping develop new therapeutic targets for metastatic cancers,” the Axiom Space statement said. IAF officer Shukla became the first Indian military astronaut on the ISS, conducting India-specific experiments on algae, tardigrades, and cellular resilience, highlighting global collaboration in space missions.