It began with a crack – barely visible, tucked away in the weld joint of a pressure feedline on a Falcon-9 booster. A minor flaw, perhaps, in the grand machinery of spaceflight. But for India, it was a moment of reckoning. Our scientists at ISRO, vigilant and uncompromising, demanded answers. They insisted on repairs, not workarounds. And in doing so, they didn’t just protect a mission – they safeguarded a dream.

That dream took flight on 25 June when Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Air Force officer and ISRO-trained astronaut, soared into orbit aboard the Axiom-4 mission. Docking with the International Space Station (ISS) a day later, he became the face of India’s next great leap – not just into space, but into the future of human-centric science, medicine, and technology. This wasn’t a ceremonial voyage. It was a scientific crusade. Shukla carried with him seven microgravity experiments, each meticulously designed by Indian researchers to answer questions that matter – not just to astronauts, but to farmers, doctors, engineers, and students across our nation.

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Consider the sprouting of methi and moong seeds in space. It sounds simple, almost poetic. But its implications are profound. In the confined quarters of a spacecraft, where every gram of nutrition counts, understanding how Indian crops behave in microgravity could redefine crew........

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