Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 26 (PTI) Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday lauded astronaut Shubhamshu Shukla and his team for making history by embarking on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the first Indian to do so. In a Facebook post, the Chief Minister said that participation of Shukla, a Group captain in the Indian Airforce, in the American space mission, Axiom Mission 4, marks a significant milestone in India’s space exploration journey. His arrival at the ISS is the first presence of an Indian in space in over four decades, he said. Captain Shukla is also one of the four astronauts selected for India’s indigenous space programme, Gaganyaan. “This achievement will serve as a major source of inspiration for future generations,” Vijayan said, extending his best wishes to Shukla and his fellow crew members. Shukla was on Wednesday headed to the ISS on a historic odyssey marking India’s return to human spaceflight after a gap of 41 years following a successful launch of the Axiom Space mission in the US with a four-member multi-country crew. After multiple delays, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch vehicle with Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon-9 rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:01 pm(IST) carrying mission pilot Shukla, former NASA astronaut Commander Peggy Whitson and mission specialists Tibor Kapu of Hungary and Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland. PTI TGB TGB ROH