Shubhanshu Shukla floats, Isro digs in at Houston to watch & learn

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla may be astronaut number 634, but he is far from the only Indian drawing value from the Axiom-4 mission .

While Shukla orbits Earth aboard the International Space Station , a contingent of Isro engineers and doctors stationed in Houston is immersed in a parallel mission — one rooted not in weightlessness, but in quiet learning. For them, this is not just a spectacle; it’s a field laboratory where decades of preparation for India’s human spaceflight future are converging into real, tactile understanding.

“This is the first time we’re seeing these operations up close—till now, it was all just documentation,” said a senior Isro official closely involved with the mission. “For us, this hands-on exposure is valuable. Add to this the science Shux will do at ISS, and it only gets better.”

Part of Isro’s delegation are eight engineers, Isro doctors and one doctor from IAF’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM), which was involved in the initial screening and selection of astronauts for India’s Gaganyaan .

On Thursday, the team got rare observational experience spread across the Johnson Space Center (JSC) and Axiom’s Mission Control in Houston. These individuals aren’t simply shadowing American counterparts; they’re embedded observers in restricted environments where much of the true know-how of human spaceflight resides.

For instance, on the day the Dragon capsule docked with the ISS, the Isro team was not just allowed into the JSC to watch operations unfold live. “We were on the audio loop, listening to mission control discussions. We saw what control operations did, how many docking attempts were made, what kind of error parameters were being monitored. These are not things you’ll find in any public webcast or document,” the official said.

While Nasa does publish mission sequences, the real-time judgement calls, procedural fluidity, and console data are generally inaccessible to the outside world — unless, as in this case, you’re a partner with boots on the ground.

Isro’s access will deepen further. “They’re setting up a dedicated conference room for us, where live console data will flow in,” the official said. There’s more than docking being studied.

With Gaganyaan planning to carry out multiple docking ops in the years ahead — and with India’s future space station on the horizon — Isro engineers are keen to absorb the choreography of mission ops in real environments.

“We’ve done one docking so far. But a space station will require many. Watching this from inside Nasa's systems gives us critical learning that we can’t replicate in India just yet.”

Medical operations, too, are under the Isro lens. Two doctors from the agency are part of the Houston team and are already participating in alternate-day medical conferences with Shukla aboard the ISS.

“It’s a private medical conference link—used routinely by Nasa and Axiom—and our doctors are now involved in that process. This is how they’ll learn the medical rhythms of human spaceflight,” the official said.

As part of India’s learning curve in astronaut rehabilitation and post-flight recovery, the doctors will also observe Shukla’s reconditioning phases, both immediately after his return and during follow-up weeks in the US.

The team is split between Axiom’s control centre and JSC’s, depending on the operation. While JSC largely handles docking and mission dynamics, Axiom leads crew management, flight surgeon coordination and private astronaut interfaces.

Axiom’s mission centre is where people from Hungary and Poland are stationed too but because they don’t have Nasa agreement like Isro does, they don’t have JSC access like the Indian space agency. Shux Floats, Isro Digs In At Houston To Watch & Learn.