{"id":219842,"date":"2025-06-27T23:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T23:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/219842\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T23:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T23:29:10","slug":"now-a-star-in-orbit-shubhanshu-shukla-was-always-a-natural-in-the-sky-india-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/219842\/","title":{"rendered":"Now a star in orbit, Shubhanshu Shukla was always a natural in the sky | India News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Now BENGALURU: He was the kind of cadet who didn\u2019t just learn to fly \u2014 he belonged in the sky. Years before Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla<\/a> became the first Indian to board the International Space Station (ISS), he was already turning heads in the cockpit of a Super Dimona aircraft at the National Defence Academy (NDA). Back then, he was just another cadet from the Hunter Squadron \u2014 call sign not yet famous, dreams still earthbound. But to the instructor watching closely from the co-pilot\u2019s seat, one thing was clear: the young man had wings.\u201cHe had a natural flair for flying,\u201d recalled Group Captain (retd) Anupam Banerjee, Shukla\u2019s first flying instructor at NDA. \u201cIn just the first few sorties, we could tell. Some cadets struggle with the feel of the controls or spatial awareness. Not Shukla. He was confident, intuitive \u2014 a very natural flier.\u201dIt was 20 years ago. The aircraft was an Austrian-built HK-36TC Super Dimona, used for ab-initio flying exposure at NDA before cadets move on to formal pilot training at the Air Force Academy. Shux, as Banerjee recalled, aced those initial flights \u2014 an early indication of the career that lay ahead: Jaguars, test pilot school, and finally, a ride to low-Earth orbit on Axiom-4 (Ax-4).But what truly stood out, Banerjee said, wasn\u2019t just skill. \u201cHe was sincere, extremely hardworking, and that\u2019s a rare combination when paired with ability. I told him then \u2014 you\u2019ll go far if you keep this up.\u201dYears later, when Shukla was preparing for spaceflight, he sent Banerjee a message. He hadn\u2019t forgotten the words. \u201cHe told me he remembered what I\u2019d said: that it\u2019s not enough to be a good flier or officer \u2014 you must be a good human being. That stayed with him. And when he told me that, it meant a lot.\u201dBanerjee had flown with Shukla only seven or eight times, but the connection endured. \u201cHe always stayed in touch. Not many do. Whenever he reached a big moment in life, he\u2019d send a message. That says a lot about the man he\u2019s become.\u201dBefore launch, the two had one last conversation. \u201cI knew he was about to enter quarantine, so I wished him luck. I told him life had already prepared him for what was coming. And that, a part of me was going to space with him.\u201dWatching Shukla dock with the ISS, Banerjee says he felt something beyond pride. \u201cIt\u2019s still unbelievable to me \u2014 that someone I trained, someone who first flew with me, is now in space. It\u2019s not just about reaching orbit. It\u2019s about who he is as a person. That matters even more.\u201dIn a way, Shukla\u2019s story is a flight path traced not just in the sky, but in character. \u201cWhen your students do well, you feel proud. But when they turn out to be fine human beings too \u2014 that\u2019s greater joy.\u201dSo yes, Shux may now be astronaut number 634. But long before he floated weightlessly in a pressurised module, he was already soaring \u2014 on skill, sincerity, and the sort of quiet steel that can\u2019t be taught.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BENGALURU: He was the kind of cadet who didn\u2019t just learn to fly \u2014 he belonged in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[86751,19069,31447,1500,10818,19067,730,10816,10817,22191,11366,86750,70,19065,413,86749,86752,5685,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-219842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-aerospace-career","9":"tag-axiom-4","10":"tag-axiom-space","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-google-news","13":"tag-group-captain","14":"tag-india","15":"tag-india-news","16":"tag-india-news-today","17":"tag-indian-astronaut","18":"tag-international-space-station","19":"tag-national-defence-academy","20":"tag-science","21":"tag-shubhanshu-shukla","22":"tag-space","23":"tag-spaceflight","24":"tag-super-dimona-aircraft","25":"tag-today-news","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114757931274837728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}