A SpaceX capsule carrying astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary, and the United States splashed down off the California coast on Tuesday, completing Axiom Mission 4. The crew undocked from the International Space Station on Monday for a 22.5-hour journey, landing in the Pacific Ocean the following day.
“Thanks for the great ride. … happy to be back,” Commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, now working for Axiom Space, said after the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego. Also aboard were pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
They launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 25 for what turned out to be a two-and-a-half-week mission, during which they conducted around 60 scientific experiments.
The mission marked a return to crewed spaceflight for the non-American trio, whose respective nations had been absent for decades. For rising space power India, the flight served as a key stepping stone toward its first independent crewed mission, scheduled for 2027 under the Gaganyaan (sky craft) program.
