Khyati Agrawal Gupta (Author, Columnist & Behaviour Writer)
You may recall news clips from a year ago: a cheery astronaut carrying the Tricolour aboard the International Space Station, greeting India with ‘Namaskar, mere pyare deshvasiyon’, practising yoga while floating in microgravity, sharing aamras & gajar halwa with teammates, & speaking live to the Prime Minister about seeing a borderless Earth.
Shubhanshu Shukla, Lucknow’s local hero, didn’t just become the first Indian astronaut on the ISS. He gave every child a roadmap to get there. Quite literally. His 342-page memoir The Second Orbit: Belief of a Man… Dreams of 1.4 Billion Hearts was released by Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh on June 25, 2026, exactly a year after his Axiom-4 launch. The book’s title is a quiet tribute to Rakesh Sharma’s historic 1984 spaceflight, India’s ‘first orbit,’ with Shukla’s own mission marking the second. The book starts with a heart-wrenching letter he wrote to himself at 14, revealing his worries about his capabilities, about his hair, his father’s expectations to pursue civil services & how after an Air Force airshow he dreamt of sitting in a fighter jet for just 5 minutes.
Offering aspiring astronauts a front-row seat to his journey the book traces his journey from a child inspired by the Kargil War to serve his country to an Indian Air Force test pilot with 2,000+ flying hours, eventually selected for Gaganyaan. He trained at Russia’s GCGT before becoming Pilot of Axiom-4. The book follows his transformation from astronaut trainee to spacefarer: nearly a year of intensive preparation, including training at NASA, the launch & 18 days aboard the ISS, roughly 13.5 million kilometres across 320 orbits, ‘about 100 metres for each one of you (Indians),’ as he puts it.
The book also humanises him through funny anecdotes: during the Axiom-4 flight, Shubhanshu fell asleep inside a storage bag in the Crew Dragon & became so wedged in that his crewmates couldn’t find him. Or how surprisingly difficult it was to wash his hair in microgravity because the water just bobs around you. He shares how it took him 5 days to make coffee with a water bubble, an air bubble & a coffee bubble. Photographs- from his NDA days to his family before launch & Earth from the ISS- add an intimate layer.
What stands out is that the book isn’t a victory lap. It includes doubts, mistakes, discomfort & humor that make the astronaut feel like a person first. His humility is striking as he repeatedly credits trainers, engineers, scientists, mission controllers, crewmates & his family showing that no astronaut gets to space alone. Ultimately, the book becomes less about space & more about persistence through years of preparation, uncertainty & setbacks
For Shubhanshu, the ISS was never the destination. He is bringing Axiom-4 lessons into Gaganyaan’s training & planning, while his 7 Indian microgravity experiments like muscle regeneration, crop germination, self-repairing tardigrades & oxygen-producing microorganisms are being studied- giving India first-hand insight into living & working in space. Recently, the Gaganyatris participated in Mission MITRA in Leh to test human performance under extreme conditions.
Beyond Gaganyaan, Shukla is part of India’s longer human-spaceflight roadmap towards the Bharatiya Antariksh Station & eventually, sending Indian astronauts to the Moon.
Since his return, Shubhanshu has emerged as a public face of India’s human-spaceflight programme, mentoring students through nationwide interactions, news channels & podcasts. On International Day of Human Space Flight 2026, he addressed students across 22 CMS campuses alongside leaders from IIIT Lucknow & IIT Kanpur.
Shubhanshu’s first orbit took him around the Earth. His second may be far more consequential: helping India build the people, technology & ambition to go further.
