Space: Shubhanshu Shukla-piloted Ax-4 mission returns on Earth
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Signifying a new landmark in the Indo-US cooperation and delighting millions of Indians, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft Grace successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Tuesday, marking the safe return of the Axiom-4 Mission (Ax-4) crew, piloted by India’s Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian to visit the International Space Station (ISS).
The four-member crew returned to Earth in approximately 22.5 hours from the ISS.
The splashdown, confirmed by SpaceX, concludes a nearly 19-day mission aboard the ISS, the media reported.
SpaceX made the announcement of the mission’s return in a post on X, marking the final stages of the crew’s return from the ISS. The re-entry was done following the completion of the deorbit burn and the jettisoning of the trunk.
“Dragon’s nosecone is closed and secured for re-entry. Splashdown in ~26 minutes,” SpaceX stated in a post on X. “Dragon’s deorbit burn is complete and the trunk has been jettisoned.”
Earlier, on Monday, the Ax-4 successfully undocked and made its way back to Earth, as observed by Axiom Space and NASA. Giving mission updates, NASA informed that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked at 7:15 am EDT (4:45 pm IST) on Monday from the space-facing port of the ISS’ Harmony module, completing the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Ax-4.
Axiom Space, in its live session on X, noted that the Ax-4 mission saw over 60 scientific studies and more than 20 outreach events. The Ax-4 crew, comprising its Commander and veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson, Mission Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut Slawosz “Suave” Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, and Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) astronaut Tibor Kapu, had been actively engaged in research and outreach activities aboard the ISS as part of the mission during the past 18-days.
According to NASA, the Dragon spacecraft has returned to Earth with more than 580 pounds of cargo, including NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments conducted during the mission.
The Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) was launched on June 25 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, USA. The Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the ISS on June 26 at 4:05 pm IST, ahead of schedule, connecting to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module.
