Draft:Shubhanshu Shukla

Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shulka is an Indian Air Force test pilot and one of the four astronaut candidates who will fly to space as part of India's first crewed flights into space.

Air Force career
Shukla is from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. He completed his NDA course in 2005.

He is a test pilot with about 2,000 hours of flying experience.

Selection as an astronaut
Shukla was included in the astronaut selection process in 2019 by the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM), an organization under the Indian Air Force. Later, he was shortlisted in the final four by IAM and ISRO. In 2020, He went to Russia for basic training with three other selected astronauts. Basic training was completed in 2021. He then returned to India and attended training at the Astronaut Training Facility in Bangalore.

His name as a member of the astronaut team was first officially announced in public on 27 February 2024, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the names of the astronaut team members for India's first space mission at ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.