Question

Which among the following statements about 'Mission AXIOM-4 is/are not correct?

i. Shubhanshu Shukla is the India's first astronaut on the International Space Station.

ii. The mission carried seed varieties developed by Kerala Agricultural University and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology.

iii. The A1-4 crew includes members from India, the USA, France and Germany.

iv. Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by NASA.

• A. Only i & ii
• B. Only iii & iv
• C. Only i & iii
• D. Only ii & iv

Answer 1

Answer:

B. Only iii & iv

• i. Correct: Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla is an ISRO astronaut serving as the pilot for Axiom-4, making him India's first astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) (and the second Indian national in space after Rakesh Sharma in 1984).

• ii. Correct: The payload includes a host of crop seed varieties (such as Jyothi and Uma rice, Kanakamani cowpea, Soorya brinjal, etc.) jointly developed/facilitated by Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) to test the effects of microgravity on seed mutation and plant growth.

• iii. Incorrect: The Ax-4 four-person crew consists of astronauts from India (Shubhanshu Shukla), the USA (Peggy Whitson), Poland (Sławosz Uznański), and Hungary (Tibor Kapu) — not France and Germany.

• iv. Incorrect: Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage-to-orbit rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX, not NASA.