Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla on Thursday hoped someone would very soon travel to space “from our own capsule, from our rocket, from our soil”. Meeting for this first time Indian media, Group Captain Shukla addressed a Press conference in the national Capital where he shared the first-hand experience from the ISS mission and termed it invaluable and a lot better than any training. Shukla is the first Indian astronaut to travel to the ISS.
He also said India looks “saare jahaan se achcha (better than the entire world)” even today — words first used by Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma after his space mission in 1984. Union Minister Jitendera Singh, ISRO chairman V Narayanan and Shukla’s backup for the mission Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair was also present in the media interaction.
On his Axiom-4 Mission, Shukla said the experience from the ISS mission would be very useful for India’s own Gaganyaan mission, and he learnt a lot in the past year as part of his mission. He also met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at South Block. Singh said Group Captain Shukla’s journey will inspire the young minds of India. Shukla already met Prime Minister Narendra Modi early this week.
“No matter how much training you have done, even after that, when you sit in the rocket and the engines ignite, when they catch fire, I think it is a very different feeling. I had not imagined how it would feel, and I was actually running behind the rocket for the first few seconds, and it took me some time to catch up to it. From that moment until the time we splashed down, the experience was unbelievable. It was so exciting and so amazing that I have really been struggling to find words to convey it to you, so that you can live that experience through my words,” he said.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh, said the Department of Space has been around for nearly 70 years, and officially, the ISRO was established in 1969.
“.... Why all this had to happen only in the last few years, why it couldn’t have happened in the last five, six decades. We have started following the strategies which are followed by the rest of the world. Now, our benchmarks are global benchmarks, our strategies are global, and the parameters that we are seeking to live up to are global,” he said.
Group Captain Prasanth B Nair, who is part of India’s Gaganyaan crew, said, “A few months from now, we are going to have Diwali. That is the time when Ram ji entered Ayodhya. Over here right now, if I can call myself Lakshman... Even though I am older than ‘Shuks’ (Shukla), I would love to be Lakshman to this Ram any day.” “But let’s remember Ram and Lakshman got a lot of help from the entire ‘vanar sena’, that is our fantastic ISRO team... Otherwise it would not have been possible,” he said.
Narayanan said it was at the insistence of ISRO engineers that SpaceX examined the leak detected in the oxidiser lines that carry liquid oxygen to the rocket engines and discovered a crack that could have proved fatal. “If with the crack the rocket lifts off, with the vibrations, it will give way the moment it lifts off. Once it gives way, it is a catastrophic situation, nothing else,” Narayanan said here.
Astronaut Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair likened Shubhanshu Shukla’s return to India after a successful space mission to the festival of Diwali, which is celebrated to mark Lord Ram’s return to Ayodhya while Group Captain Nair, who was the backup astronaut for Shukla for the Axiom-4 mission, also likened himself to Laxman, the younger brother of Lord Ram.