The crew of the Crew Dragon capsule, comprised of astronauts from the US, India, Poland and Hungary, enter the International Space Station on June 26.

By AFP and Blue Shift | 2025-06-30

A US commercial mission carrying astronauts from India, Poland and Hungary docked with the International Space Station on June 26.

Axiom Mission 4, or Ax-4, lifted off early June 25 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a brand-new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule riding a Falcon 9 rocket.

Onboard were pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India; mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary; and Commander Peggy Whitson of the United States, a former NASA astronaut now with Axiom Space, which organizes private spaceflights.

The capsule, the fifth and final Dragon in the SpaceX fleet, was christened "Grace" after reaching orbit.

It achieved "soft capture," or the first stage of docking, with the orbital lab June 26 at 6.31am Eastern Time (10.31 GMT).

They later entered the station through the hatch and were greeted by the current ISS crew during a brief welcome ceremony.

"It's so great to be here at last," said Whitson. "That was a long quarantine."

The crew will now spend about 14 days aboard the station, conducting some 60 experiments -- including studies on microalgae, sprouting salad seeds and the hardiness of microscopic tardigrades in space.

Key step for India

The last time India, Poland or Hungary sent people to space, their current crop of astronauts had not yet been born -- and back then they were called cosmonauts, as they all flew on Soviet missions before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Shukla is the first Indian to reach space since Rakesh Sharma, who flew to the Salyut 7 station in 1984 as part of an Indo-Soviet mission.

India's space agency, ISRO, sees this flight as a key step toward its first independent crewed mission, slated for 2027 under the Gaganyaan ("sky craft") program. India also has plans to set up a space station by 2035 and send an astronaut to the Moon by 2040, the BBC reported.

"What a fantastic ride," Shukla said in Hindi after liftoff. "This isn't just the start of my journey to the International Space Station -- it's the beginning of India's human space program."

Each country is funding its astronaut's seat.

India paid $59 million to secure a seat for Shukla on Ax-4 and his training, according to the BBC.

Poland has spent €65 million ($76 million) for its astronaut's flight, according to the Polish Space Agency. Hungary announced a $100 million deal with Axiom in 2022, according to spacenews.com.