Overview

• Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla was received at Indira Gandhi International Airport by Union Minister Jitendra Singh, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan on Sunday.
• Lok Sabha has scheduled a special discussion on August 18 titled “India’s first astronaut aboard the ISS – Critical role of the space programme for Viksit Bharat by 2047” to commemorate Shukla’s return.
• He is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi today and is expected to visit his hometown Lucknow before returning for National Space Day events on August 22–23.
• More than 60 scientific experiments from the Axiom-4 mission have been transferred to Indian laboratories, and ISRO has begun processing the data to guide life-support planning for the Gaganyaan programme.
• The Axiom-4 flight, a collaboration between Axiom Space, SpaceX and NASA, marked India’s first human spaceflight since 1984 and demonstrated expanding India-US ties in crewed missions.