In 1984, Rakesh Sharma made history as the first India in space. 31 years later, the second Indian to travel to space, and the first from the country to visit the International Space Station (ISS), Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla returned to Earth on Tuesday, after a 20-day landmark space journey that prepares the ground for India's own human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan.
Along with the successful completion of the mission that secured him and 4 other crew members that journeyed with him in SpaceX's Axiom-4 over 580 pounds worth research material, Shukla's return signals where human ambition is headed in the long-run and for Indians it's certainly a cultural inflection point.
The test pilot's mission that brought outcomes from more than 60 investigations - seven of them Indian-adds to the major shift in the way we think about human potential and space.
When Indira Gandhi asked Sharma in 1984 what India looked like from orbit, his now-iconic reply, "Saare Jahan Se Accha" felt poetic. But for an entire generation, it was more than just a patriotic flourish. It planted was a question, a dare and triggered imagination.
Over the years, our curiosity and pride has found attachments to the "beyond". Space has occupied a particular place in the Indian imagination — equal parts wonder, science, and self-definition. From Chandrayaan to the Mars Orbiter, the focus has largely been technical and mission-based.
And the soft-landing of Shukla in the pacific ocean at off the California coast is one of the most historical moments in Indian space history that adds more to the hope around India’s long-term crewed program, Gaganyaan and answer questions around what is out there in space, how much of what's recorded in our mythologies has really true, what more can we know about ourselves, where we come from and where we can go.
A Shift in the Sky
For most of the 20th century, space was defined by competition and spectacle. But something changed in the 2020s.
Suddenly, the players weren’t only governments, they were billionaires. The conversation around space turned toward private rockets, suborbital joyrides, and luxury seats above the Kármán line.
The Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) and Expedition 73 crews join each other for a group portrait on June 26, 2025. In the front row (from left) are, Ax-4 crewmates Tibor Kapu, Peggy Whitson, Shubhanshu Shukla, and Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski with Expedition 73 crewmates Anne McClain and Takuya Onishi. In the rear are, Expedition 73 crewmates Alexey Zubritskiy, Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, Jonny Kim, and Nichole Ayers.NASA
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk’s SpaceX — have all began reshaping space as a domain of experience, not just exploration. And the word that stuck around with these private competitors is tourism.
The idea that civilians, not only astronauts, can float weightlessly above Earth sparked imaginations, headlines, and debates. Even the idea that we can live on Mars leading to deep questions like Is this the future? Is this even necessary?
While against this backdrop, Shukla’s mission offers a cultural contrast with a research residency, it clearly points to the where the human ambition is heading. We are entering a divergent space age, where curiosity, commerce, and culture are all in orbit — sometimes in harmony, sometimes in tension and often than not as a shared human endeavour.
In that sense, his return is also a reminder: as space becomes more accessible through science, through tourism, through private enterprise, we know what kind of ambition we want to carry with us. Is it a mix of curiosity, spectacle, and collaboration .Because it’s clearer than ever now that the sky is no longer the limit.
