Shubhanshu Shukla spun around himself for 3 hours to collect experiment samples

New Delhi: Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla had to spin around himself for three hours to extract samples of the micro-gravity experiments he performed during his 18-day stay onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

At the Emerging Science, Technology and Innovation Conclave (ESTIC) here, Shukla gave a glimpse into the time he spent on the orbital lab, the experience of G-force during lift-off and splashdown, feeling of weightlessness and readjusting to life on Earth after the spaceflight.

"My aim is to take you through this journey along with me and hear what I have experienced so that you get to live this (spaceflight) with me," Shukla said in his hour-long talk on the Axiom-4 mission that made him the first Indian to travel to the ISS.

Shukla said he spent at least three hours spinning around himself to extract samples from a pouch using a syringe for the study on how micro-algae, a source of dense nutrition, grows in space.

"On Earth, when there is an air bubble in a syringe, you can just squeeze it a bit and the air bubble would go out, or invert the pouch and it would rise to the top. But this doesn't happen in space," he said.

Shukla had to collect samples of the micro-algae experiment from a pouch and store them in small boxes in a freezer to be brought back to Earth.

"When there is a bubble, the only thing that works is that you have to become a centrifuge yourself," he said, adding that he had to collect 36 samples with four-five turns of centrifuging for every sample.

"So, those were the number of rounds I had to do to take the sample out without the air. I had to keep spinning for three hours just to extract the samples and put them in small boxes so that they can be frozen," Shukla said, adding that the unique environment of space called for unique solutions.

Shukla said during the year-long training for the mission, the Axiom-4 crew had factored in every possible aspect of human space flight, but after the lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre, the experience that he went through was completely different.

"The training prepared us for the flight, but the minute the ignition happened, all the notions that I had of what I knew just went out of the window. From that point of time till the recovery happened, it was an entirely new experience for me end-to-end. It was similar to what I had learned, but it was different," he said.

Shukla said he was the 634th astronaut to travel to space, but he realised the enormity of the feat he had achieved when he visited his school in Lucknow and interacted with the students who felt that someone like them had travelled to the space station.