Your experience will be key to Gaganyaan, manned moon missions: PM Modi to Shux

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday spoke to Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, who travelled to the International Space Station (ISS) on an Axiom-4 mission, which also included astronauts from the US, Hungary and Poland.

Lauding his feat of becoming just the second Indian in space and the first ever on the ISS, PM Modi assigned Shukla some 'homework', saying that while aboard the orbiting laboratory, he should gain enough experience and expertise because it will be key to the country's Gaganyaan and manned moon missions as well as India's quest to build its own space station in the near future. 

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla is the pilot of the Axiom-4 mission, which launched from Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to the ISS on Wednesday. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft completed a 28-hour journey before executing a flawless docking manoeuvre at the ISS's Harmony module.  

The PM also spoke about Shukla's experience on the mission so far, his training with his crewmates, and the targeted experiments aboard the ISS, among others. Watch the full conversation here.