PM Modi meets astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian to visit International Space Station

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday met group captain Shubhanshu Shukla, the second Indian in space and the first to visit the International Space Station.

PMO released the video of the meeting, which shows Modi hugging Shukla, whose successful return from the Axiom 4 mission, is expected to inform India's space missions in future, including India's first human spaceflight — Gaganyaan.

India aims to expand its space economy to $45 billion in the next 10 years, as against $8 billion today. India’s space budget will also have to be boosted to reach that goal.

The present space budget is nearly $1.93 billion a year, a fraction compared to the US ($61.97 billion) and China ($12 billion).

Currently, India accounts for 2 per cent of the global space economy. The global space economy was around $447 billion in 2020.

Currently a laggard, India, with two successful back-to-back space missions to the moon and now the sun — Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya-L1, respectively — is now eyeing a lion’s share of the space economy.