Shubhanshu Shukla created history last month as the first Indian to ever visit the International Space Station — playing a critical role in the ongoing Axiom 4 mission. The Indian Air Force Group Captain departed earth on July 26 after a multi-week delay that was announced mere hours before the launch. ISRO chief Dr V Narayanan has now revealed that his team was the first to spot the issue and subsequently refused to participate in the launch. Nearly a day later, SpaceX confirmed a liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon 9 rocket during a post-static fire inspection.
“I was leading the team, and after thorough discussions, we decided not to accept the takeoff. On the evening of June 10, we informed the SpaceX team to call off the launch. My team was not confident about the rocket’s integrity and refused to participate,” ISRO chief Dr V Narayanan revealed during a recent address.
The remarks were made during the inaugural ceremony of the IEEE International Conference at Presidency University n Bengaluru earlier this week. Narayanan revealed that many had initially dismissed the claim before it was eventually confirmed by SpaceX engineers the next day.
It was a fantastic job of saving the mission. Today, astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and the entire mission are safe. India is second to none,” he added.
The Axiom-4 commercial mission is led by Commander Peggy Whitson, with Shukla as mission pilot and Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu and Poland’s Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski as mission specialists. It was initially scheduled for lift-off on May 29 before being delayed to to June 8, then June 10 and June 11 after engineers detected a liquid oxygen leak in the boosters of the Falcon-9 rocket. NASA also detected leaks in the ageing Russian module of the International Space Station.