NASA has set June 25 as the new launch date for the long-delayed Axiom-4 (Ax-4) mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the space agency announced on Tuesday.
The launch is now scheduled for 2:31 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, June 25, and will take place from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Ax-4 mission is a joint effort by NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX. Originally planned for May 29, the mission has faced several postponements due to technical issues, weather conditions, and ongoing safety evaluations.
It was successively deferred to June 8, 10, 11, 19, and 22. The latest delay was attributed to continuing assessments of repair work on the aft section of the Russian Zvezda service module aboard the ISS.
The Ax-4 mission will be commanded by Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and now Director of Human Spaceflight at Axiom Space.
Joining Whitson on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft are three other astronauts: Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, an astronaut from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), who will serve as the mission’s pilot; Sławosz Uznanski-Wiśniewski, a Polish project astronaut from the European Space Agency (ESA); and Tibor Kapu from Hungary—both serving as mission specialists.
Shukla will become the second Indian to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma’s 1984 mission.
During their stay on the ISS, the crew will conduct a range of scientific experiments. Shukla will lead research focused on food and space nutrition, under a collaborative initiative involving ISRO, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), and NASA. The research aims to enhance understanding of sustainable life-support systems, a crucial aspect of future long-duration space travel.
According to Axiom, this will be the first government-sponsored human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary since the 1980s.
