Shubhanshu Shukla

Some Lesser Known Facts About Shubhanshu Shukla

• In 1973, Shubhanshu’s father came from Sandila, Hardoi to Lucknow where they made their house in Triveni Nagar in 1980.

• In 2002, he got an application form for the National Defence Academy (NDA) entrance exam from a friend who did not want to take the exam. He applied without informing anyone from his family and got selected.

  

• He was commissioned in the fighter pilot stream of the Indian Air Force (IAF) on 17 June 2006. He later became a fighter combat leader and a test pilot with approximately 2,000 hours of flying experience.

• On 17 June 2019, he was promoted to the position of Wing Commander. He is skilled in flying different types of aircraft such as Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier, and An-32. ^[3]Bharat Rakshak

  

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) selected him in 2019 for training at Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City of Moscow Oblast, Russia.

  

• From February 2020 to March 2021, he trained in Russia where he learned spacecraft systems, space physiology, and emergency procedures. ^[4]The Indian Express

• On 27 February 2024, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Shubhanshu Shukla’s name along with three other astronauts for Gaganyaan, India’s first manned space mission, scheduled to be launched in 2024-2025; he also gave wings to them.
  

  

  

• In an interview, his father said that Shubhanshu does not talk about his plans in advance and keeps them a secret. He was not in touch with his family for many days during the Balakot strike (Operation Bandar) in 2019.

  

• His mother told him to not become an astronaut when he told her that he wanted to become an astronaut.

  

• In August 2024, ISRO signed an agreement with Axiom Space Inc. to send Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair and Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Axiom-4 mission. Nair was selected as a backup, while Shukla was chosen as the prime astronaut.

• In 2025, NASA confirmed the selection of Shukla to be one of the four astronauts to visit the ISS by the spring of the same year. With this, he became the first Indian astronaut to visit the ISS.

• On 25 June 2025, Shukla was launched to the ISS as part of the Axiom Mission 4 mission as a mission pilot from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Upon reaching the ISS, Shukla addressed the Indians in Hindi. He was designated as ISS Astronaut number 634.

• Shubhanshu Shukla left the ISS on 14 July 2025 at around 4.50 pm IST, and his space aircraft carrying him and his four colleagues splashed down off the Californian coast on 15 July 2025 at 3.01 pm IST.