Citizens of Hungary, Poland and India have flown into space for the first time in decades. SpaceX Corporation’s Dregon Crew spacecraft with four astronauts on board has travelled to the International Space Station. It is a commercial project Axiom Mission 4.The astronauts are expected to be aboard the ISS for a fortnight.
The Falcon9 rocket launched on Wednesday night from a spaceport in the state of Florida. The crew includes former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu, Pole Slawosz Poznanski-Wisniewski, and Indian Air Force test pilot Shubhanshu Shukla.
As AFP notes, At the time India, Poland and Hungary sent their citizens into space last time, those who flew there today were not yet born, and the Indian, Polish and Hungarian astronauts were called cosmonauts because they flew as part of the Intercosmos programme on Soviet ships. Rakesh Sharma, an Indian, visited the Salyut-7 station in 1984. Shukla will thus become the first Indian to visit the ISS. The country’s authorities are giving his flight a lot of attention and he is expected to hold a session with Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the ISS.
Hungary’s Bertalan Farkas flew into space in 1980 and Poland’s Miroslaw Hermaszewski in 1978. till date, they remained the only citizens of their respective countries to have travelled to space. Both countries were then within the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union and were part of the Soviet-led military alliance, the Warsaw Pact.