After several delays, SpaceX Falcon 9 spacecraft with the Crew Dragon capsule and four astronauts-- including India's Shubhanshu Shukla-- lifted off on Wednesday.

Shukla is currently one of four astronauts aboard Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), which lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:01 pm IST. The mission marks his first foray into space and sets the stage for a far more ambitious goal: piloting India’s first crewed space mission, Gaganyaan.

India, Poland, and Hungary have launched astronauts into space for the first time in over 40 years, marking a historic return to human spaceflight. The Axiom-4 mission, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center,