ISRO astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla has been awarded the Ashoka Chakra – India’s highest peacetime gallantry award – for his heroic spaceflight last year. The announcement was made on January 25 after President Droupadi Murmu approved the gallantry awards for 70 armed forces personnel, including six posthumous.
The first three major gallantry awards (Param Vir Chakra, Maha Vir Chakra and Vir Chakra) were instituted by the government of India on January 26, 1950. Three more awards (Ashoka Chakra Class-I, Class-II and Class-III) were introduced thereafter and later renamed as Ashoka Chakra, Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra, respectively. Read full list of the recipients here.
According to Ministry of Defence, the order of precedence of the gallantry awards is the Param Vir Chakra, the Ashoka Chakra, the Mahavir Chakra, the Kirti Chakra, the Vir Chakra and the Shaurya Chakra.
More about Shubhanshu Shukla
Also a Group Captain in the Indian Air Force (IAF), Shukla became the first Indian to visit space in 41 years – following in the footsteps of his mentor Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma who flew on the Soyuz T-11 mission in 1984. Shukla was part of Axiom Space’s Ax-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) which launched on June 25, 2025. He also became the first Indian to visit the ISS and conducted several experiments on behalf of ISRO over 18 days.
Accompanying him were retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Polish national Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Hungary’s Tibor Kapu. Both Uznański-Wiśniewski and Kapu flew on their debut mission and represented their respective countries in space after four decades.
Shukla was born on October 10, 1985 in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh and got commissioned in the IAF in 2006. He’s experienced in flying several aircraft including the Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier, and An-32, logging an impressive 2,000 flight hours. His flying experience paved the way for him to serve as a pilot of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on Ax-4.
Prior to his debut mission, he underwent rigorous training at Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow’s Star City after his selection as an ISRO astronaut in 2019. He is also one of the four crew members who will be the first to fly to low-Earth orbit on upcoming Gaganyaan flights.
During the course of his debut mission, Shukla conducted experiments focused on plant and microbial growth as well as human health, and interacted with school students and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. By the time his Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, he had made 320 orbits of Earth and travelled 13.5 million kilometres.
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