President Droupadi Murmu on Monday conferred India's highest peacetime gallantry award, Ashoka Chakra, to Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, who created history by becoming the first Indian to set foot on the International Space Station (ISS).
The President presented the award to Shukla at the Republic Day celebrations at the Kartavya Path, the centrepiece boulevard of the national capital.
In June last year, Shukla became the second Indian to have gone to space and the first to visit the ISS as part of the historic Axiom-4 mission. His 18-day space odyssey came 41 years after cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma flew aboard the Russian Soyuz-11 space mission.
As a fighter pilot, Shukla has an impressive record of 2,000 hours of flight experience across various aircraft, including the Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier, and An-32.
Shukla served as pilot for the Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) to the International Space Station and left an indelible mark on India's remarkable advancements in human space exploration.
After the successful space mission, Group Captain Shukla became a household name as his contribution during the mission, including the conduct of sophisticated experiments, received recognition from global space experts.
The Axiom-4 mission was executed by US-based private firm Axiom Space, and it involved NASA, European Space Agency (Esa) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Group Captain Shukla hails from Lucknow. He was commissioned into the fighter stream of the Indian Air Force in June 2006.