The crew brought back more than 580 pounds of cargo, including NASA equipment and data from over 60 experiments carried out during their two-week stay aboard the ISS.
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and his Axiom-4 crewmates safely returned to Earth as SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California, at around 3 pm IST today.
The crew, which launched on June 25 after multiple delays, spent nearly three weeks aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The return marks a historic milestone for India, with Shubhanshu Shukla becoming the second Indian ever to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma — and the first Indian to visit the ISS.
A video capturing the splashdown shows the Dragon capsule descending slowly into the Pacific, supported by its four parachutes as it made a smooth landing.
The return journey took approximately 22.5 hours, with the spacecraft undocking from the ISS around 4:50 pm IST on Monday, following an 18-day stay. The astronauts will now undergo a short acclimatisation period.
Alongside Shukla, who served as pilot on the mission, the Axiom-4 crew included veteran American astronaut Peggy Whitson, ESA project astronaut Slawosz “Suave” Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland, and Hungarian HUNOR astronaut Tibor Kapu. The mission had launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The crew brought back over 580 pounds of cargo, including NASA hardware and data from more than 60 scientific experiments conducted during their stay aboard the ISS, according to NASA.
The Axiom-4 mission “realized the return” to human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary, with each nation’s first government-sponsored flight in over four decades. While this was only the second human spaceflight mission in history for all three nations, it marked the first time they participated in a mission aboard the International Space Station.