Shubhanshu Shukla becomes India’s new space pioneer

India's Shubhanshu Shukla and three other astronauts entered the International Space Station to warm hugs from the crew members of the orbital laboratory on Thursday.

The space station crew welcomed Axiom-4 mission commander Peggy Whitson as she floated into the station soon after the hatch-opening procedures were completed at 5:44 pm IST.

Shukla, the mission pilot, followed Whitson, with Polish engineer Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, a mission specialist and a European Space Agency project astronaut, close behind.

"We are happy to be here. It was a long quarantine," Whitson, who is on her fifth spaceflight, said as the four astronauts waved to the mission control at Houston.

This is the first time an Indian astronaut has travelled to the International Space Station.

"At 6:31 am EDT (4:01 IST) on Thursday, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station for the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Axiom Mission 4," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced in a statement.

A live videolink from the NASA showed the spacecraft approaching the space station. The docking sequence was completed at 4:15 pm IST.

After the soft capture of the spacecraft, the hard-mating was completed when the two orbiting bodies were connected with 12 sets of hooks with each other and communication and power links were established.

The hatch-opening procedures took an hour and 45 minutes before the astronauts floated on board the space station.

Shukla, a test pilot with the Indian Air Force, is the second Indian to go to space and the first since Rakesh Sharma's eight-day sojourn in 1984.