India, June 25 -- Indian Air Force (IAF) Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla is among the four member team aboard the SpaceX Dragon aircraft which is travelling to space on the Axiom-4 mission.

Shukla, who is the mission pilot for Axiom-4, is only the second Indian astronaut to travel to space. While the mission was postponed multiple times due to technical delays, the aircraft finally performed lift-off at 12.01 pm on Wednesday.

Shukla thus became the first Indian astronaut to travel to the International Space Station in the last forty years. He is accompanied by mission commander and former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski (Poland) and Tibor Kapu (Hungary).

Before lift-off, Shukla said tha...