Axiom Space, a privately funded American aerospace enterprise, successfully concluded its Ax-4 mission on Tuesday morning, returning astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary from the International Space Station, with a secure splashdown off the coast of California.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft “Grace” touched down in the Pacific Ocean close to San Diego on July 15 at 4:31 a.m. CT / 5:31 a.m. ET. Onboard were American Commander Peggy Whitson (Axiom’s human spaceflight director), Indian pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, and Polish and Hungarian mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu. They were retrieved by SpaceX and Axiom support crews, who hoisted the capsule into a “Dragon nest” before transferring it to a flat deck for the astronauts to exit.
The splashdown can be watched starting at the 1:04:00 mark in Axiom’s livestream, where Whitson affirms that the crew is safe and “glad to be back.”
The crew launched for the ISS on June 25 for a 14-day mission, engaging in microgravity research, technology demonstrations, and outreach activities, as noted by NASA. This represents the second crewed spaceflight mission for India, Poland, and Hungary, and the first occasion that astronauts from these three nations have visited the ISS.