Captain Shubhanshu Shukla with his group.
BENGALURU: The Axiom-4 mission (Ax-4), which will take Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to space, is now expected to launch on June 19, Isro said early Saturday.“Axiom Space informed that they were working closely with Nasa to assess the pressure anomaly in the Zvezda Service Module onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Axiom Space is now targeting June 19, 2025 for the launch of the Ax-04 mission,” Isro said.Axiom Space or Nasa are yet to make a formal announcement about the new launch date. The launch, originally scheduled for May 29, was deferred to June 8 following the detection of an issue in the electrical harness of the Crew Dragon module, Isro had said earlier.It was then postponed by a day to June 9 — which was not publicly announced — and then rescheduled to June 10. This postponment, as per Isro was due to a delay in “preparedness of the Falcon-9 vehicle for the launch”.The June 10 launch was rescheduled once again, this time due to unfavourable weather conditions along the rocket’s ascent corridor.During preparations for a hot fire test on June 8, SpaceX engineers detected an liquid oxygen (LOX) leak in Falcon-9. An anomaly was also found in one of the engine actuators, which was subsequently replaced along with its controller.Also read: From earth to orbit: How Axiom-4 will reach the space stationExpecting a quick resolution of the LOX leak, the mission was initially rescheduled for June 11. At this juncture SpaceX and Axiom-4 mission partners decided to postpone the launch further to conduct a test to validate the corrections carried out.Isro has reiterated that it has been very particular about crew safety and that it had sought that all issues be “completely resolved” before going ahead with the launch.Even as SpaceX fixed those issues by June 12, Axiom Space and Nasa announced a further delay citing a leak detected in the Zvezda Service Module of the ISS.
