New Delhi: ISRO Gaganyatri Shubhanshu Shukla returned from an 18 day stay on board the International Space Station (ISS) on 15 July. There was a lot of excitement around the mission among the space enthusiast community, but this was not capitalised by ISRO, which barely gave any updates on the progress of the mission. The Axiom 4 mission was an international collaboration between a number of parties, including ESA, ISRO, NASA, SpaceX and Axiom Space. All of the other participants were constantly sharing updates on social media throughout the duration of the mission, but for some reason, not ISRO.
Our hashtag is trending at #5!! 🔥
Let’s take it to No. 1!! 💪If you care about ISRO’s public perception and the impact it has on our population,
Tweet using #ISROfixYourPR, or Quote/Reply to this post with the same 🙏 pic.twitter.com/WFcxbeThKk— ISRO Spaceflight (@ISROSpaceflight) July 22, 2025
ISRO has done phenomenal work in furthering science, from Chandrayaan to NISAR, but its public communication, outreach, and storytelling are seriously lacking.
ISRO doesn’t need hype but we need more transparency, & scientist spotlights.
Let’s amplify: #ISROfixYourPR pic.twitter.com/AW8WnPmXHn
— ZetaGravit (@zetagravit) July 22, 2025
You never know who the next Jagdish Chandra Bose or Satish Dhawan will be. They may never be inspired to even explore the field of science and astronomy, and never get to its potential Brilliant scientist who could have changed the world of science #ISROfixYourPR pic.twitter.com/ocZwJlok1Y
— Damodar Ghosh 🇮🇳 (@DamosUniverse) July 22, 2025
ISRO’S Future is filled with SCI-FI Missions of next generation.
RS-3 with really high quality stereo coverage of earth, very unique in the world
GISAT – medium resolution earth observation from geostationary orbit
RISAT- Series , world class ( infact one of the best in the… pic.twitter.com/CJTcV8A83g
— Radha Krishna Kavuluru (@iamkrishradha) July 22, 2025
The nations future is what the Children are dreaming today, Indian science especially ISRO have the power to write India’s future, make them dream with good scientific outreach and PR #ISROfixYourPR pic.twitter.com/K7k1EKO5TR
— Gareeb Scientist (@gareebscientist) July 22, 2025
#ISROfixYourPR
ISRO PR Department’s score out of 10: pic.twitter.com/wp7a1JslAG
— Anshuman (TitaniumSV5) (@TitaniumSV5) July 21, 2025
The few images shared by ISRO through press releases were of laughably low resolution. There was an engagement with school children through amateur radio, that ISRO could have easily livestreamed. There was no reason that all the citizens of India could not access or even view two of two video link interactions with school children in Trivandrum and Lucknow, as well as conversations in amateur radio frequencies with students and engineers at the URSC in Bengaluru and seven schools in Northeast India. All four of these interactions could have easily been shared with a much wider audience, if ISRO had chosen to do so.
#ISROfixYourPR
ISRO could have provided daily updates on the schedule for Shux on the ISS, the progress on the experiments being conducted, engaged and reshared the posts by the other participating private spaceflight companies as well as space agencies. There was a high-level ISRO delegation posted to the USA during the mission, which included a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. While NASA posted about these visits, there were only a few lines accompanied by low-resolution photos shared by ISRO many days after their return. All of these shortcomings in the outreach during the Axiom 4 mission is what has resulted in the hashtag trending today, but there are deeper problems with ISRO’s outreach beyond this specific mission as well.