Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla to return to India on Sunday, to meet PM Modi

New Delhi: Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla is set to return to India on Sunday after his historic visit to the International Space Station (ISS) and is eager to share his experiences with friends and colleagues back home as ISRO eyes its maiden human spaceflight in 2027.

Shukla, who has been in the US, training for the Axiom-4 mission to ISS for the past one year, is expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and travel to his hometown Lucknow soon after.

He is expected to be back in the capital to participate in the National Space Day celebrations on August 22-23.

Shukla posted on Instagram a smiling photograph of himself sitting in an aeroplane, and said in its caption that he was filled with mixed emotions as he left the US and could not wait to return to India to share his experiences with everyone back home.

"As I sit on the plane to come back to India, I have a mix of emotions running through my heart. I feel sad leaving a fantastic group of people behind who were my friends and family for the past one year during this mission. I am also excited about meeting all my friends, family and everyone in the country for the first time post mission. I guess this is what life is -- everything all at once," Shukla said in the post.

"Having received incredible love and support from everyone during and after the mission, I can't wait to come back to India to share my experiences with all of you. Goodbyes are hard but we need to keep moving in life. As my commander Peggy Whitson fondly says, 'the only constant in spaceflight is change'. I believe that applies to life as well," he said.

Shukla also added, "I guess at the end of the day -'Yun hi chala chal rahi - jeevan gaadi hai samay pahiya'," recalling the song from the Bollywood movie Swades that was on his playlist just before he embarked on the Axiom-4 mission to the ISS on June 25 from the US.

Shukla and his backup astronaut Prashanth Nair participated in the Independence Day celebrations at the Indian Consulate in Houston on Friday.

Addressing the 79th Independence Day celebrations at the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said India was developing its own space station and recalled that Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla has returned from a space mission.

"Our Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla has returned from the space station. In the coming days, he is returning to India," Modi had said.

Shukla was part of the Axiom-4 private space mission that lifted off from Florida on June 25 and docked at the International Space Station on June 26. He returned to Earth on July 15.

Along with three other astronauts -- Peggy Whitson (US), Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski (Poland), and Tibor Kapu (Hungary) -- Shukla conducted over 60 experiments and 20 outreach sessions during the 18-day mission.