15 Jul 2025, 03:28 PM IST The family of Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla celebrated his return to Earth, along with the entire crew, after an 18-day mission on the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla returned to Earth on Tuesday, 15 July 2025, marking the completion of the 39-year-old Indian Air Force officer and test pilot’s first spaceflight during the Axiom-4 mission—a commercial spaceflight supported by ISRO and NASA, and operated by Axiom Space. About Shubhanshu Shukla Born on October 10, 1985, Shukla was raised in Lucknow in a middle-class household with no direct ties to aviation or space exploration. He was inspired by a childhood trip to an airshow. "As a child, he had once been to an air show and was fascinated by the speed and sound of the aircraft. That's when he first spoke about flying," his elder sister, Suchi Shukla, told PTI. “But of course, there was no telling at the time how quickly he would embrace his dream,” she added. He studied at City Montessori School (CMS), and he applied to the National Defence Academy (NDA) after his classmate, who was overage and couldn't appear, passed on the form to Shukla. Shubhanshu was commissioned into the Indian Air Force in 2006 and completed over 2,000 hours of flying time on advanced fighter aircraft such as the Su-30 MKI, MiG-29, Jaguar, and Dornier-228. He later completed an MTech in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.