Musk-Trump feud scare for Shukla, Axiom 4 space mission on

India’s Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla's mission — Axiom 4 — to the International Space Station (ISS) scheduled on June 10 will not be affected by the feud between US President Donald Trump and SpaceX chief Elon Musk.

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) press secretary Bethany Stevens said, “NASA will continue to execute upon the President’s vision for the future of space. We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President’s objectives in space are met.”

Musk and Trump engaged in a war of words on X. It was triggered by Musk’s criticism of a congressional tax Bill, which he claimed would result in an increase in the national debt. Trump hit back, saying that the easiest way to save money in the budget was to terminate Musk’s governmental subsidies and contracts.

“In light of the President’s statement about the cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Musk retorted.

However, in a response to a post, he relented, saying the decommissioning won’t happen. “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon,” Musk said.

He later reposted a photo of the US flag against the backdrop of the Dragon on X, saying, "Team America".

The Axiom 4 mission is jointly being carried out by Axiom Space, NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). SpaceX, the company responsible for Axiom 4, is using its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket for the mission.

However, the concern sparked the vulnerability of NASA that depends on SpaceX for its space mission.

The Dragon capsule by SpaceX is a spacecraft that is capable of carrying a crew in space. NASA is heavily dependent on the spacecraft for carrying astronauts to the ISS.

Musk’s space company is the largest private space corporation. NASA’s Artemis programme, which the space agency is looking forward to exploring the Moon for scientific discovery and technology advancement, is expected to use the Starship spacecraft of SpaceX.

NASA is also investing $4 billion into Starship's development.

The future of NASA’s future space mission will be affected if SpaceX were to decommission the spacecraft. Shukla’s space mission comes four decades after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma (retd) went to space.

An official source said, “The mission is not impacted. It will take off on June 10.”