NEW DELHI: It began with a thunderous roar from Cape Canaveral and ended, about 28 hours later, with a gentle, precise docking around 400km above Earth as Dragon capsule Grace latched onto the

International Space Station

(ISS) at 4.02pm Thursday.Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla

, aka Shux, quietly made history, entering ISS at 5.44pm, a minute after commander Peggy Whitson. Shukla's presence aboard the orbiting lab marks not just a personal milestone but a national turning point. India has arrived at the frontiers of

commercial human spaceflight

."Welcome, Earthlings," radioed veteran astronaut Whitson earlier as capsule Grace streamed over Europe carrying Axiom crew on their first full day in orbit. Their in-flight broadcast came after flying over Italy, Sicily, Greek islands, and the Balkans. Before docking, Shukla said, "I'm learning everything anew: how to walk, how to eat..."

Grace, launched from Nasa's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), executed a series of precisely-timed orbit-raising manoeuvres before it aligned with the ISS and docked. Hours before docking, in his first full in-flight transmission, Shukla said, "Grace has been very kind. I wasn't feeling great when we got shot into the vacuum. But since yesterday, I have apparently been sleeping a lot - which is a good sign! I am learning everything anew - how to walk, how to eat, how to be." The Lucknow boy acknowledged it was "good to make mistakes", and even "better to see somebody else do that, too".

Isro's Ax-4 team, which briefly returned to India along with chairman V Narayanan after the original launch was delayed, got down to work at the mission control centre in Houston. "We had around eight people on consoles and we were excited and anxious. We are elated at the successful docking," an Isro scientist said.After hours of cruising, once Grace was within range, it began a slow and measured approach. Every manoeuvre went as planned and, at each stage, ground controllers and onboard systems assessed progress and gave "go" commands. Given a clean approach, the ground station and ISS allowed Grace to skip two halts - at "waypoint-1" and "waypoint-2" - which advanced the docking by nearly half-an-hour. At around 20 metres, Grace made its final approach, using a suite of laser-based sensors and cameras, aligned precisely with the docking port on the station. The spacecraft then moved forward at just a few centimetres per second and made contact.Once the soft capture - magnets gently pulling Grace into position - was complete, the hard capture, where mechanical latches and hooks secured the spacecraft, followed. A pressure-tight seal formed between Grace and ISS.Over the next 14 days, the crew will conduct over 60

microgravity experiments

, outreach programmes, and collaborative science activities.