Chennai, Feb 1 (Reporter) The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have entered into an agreement to collaborate in microgravity research in the upcoming Axion-4 mission, to be piloted by Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla marking country's India’s first crewed International Space Station (ISS) mission. In an update, ISRO said it had recently entered into a pact with ESA to cooperate on activities related to Astronaut Training, Mission Implementation and Research Experiments. This agreement provides an opportunity for undertaking joint microgravity experiments. In this regard, microgravity research experiments by Indian Principal Investigators (PIs) have been jointly shortlisted by ISRO and ESA for implementation on ISS during Axiom-4 mission: They were Comparative growth and proteomics responses of cyanobacteria on urea and nitrate in microgravity, impact of Microgravity on Growth and Yield Parameters in Food Crop Seeds. It said currently, these shortlisted microgravity experiments are under various phases of evaluation in view of safety driven operational philosophy of human spaceflight missions. Further, ISRO and ESA will be jointly carrying out human research and other scientific and technology demonstration experiments. In addition to these, cooperation in microgravity research with other space agencies during Axiom-4 mission is also being actively pursued. The field of microgravity research with potential applications in human health research, physical sciences, material sciences, novel pharmaceutical development and biotechnology offers significant opportunities to national scientific community. The Indian Human Space Program, maiden Gaganyaan mission, aims to encourage and support the Indian scientific community in microgravity research activities through flight opportunities in ISRO’smissions as well as joint international efforts...////...