by A SpaceX capsule with an international crew from India, Poland, Hungary and the United States has left the international space station and will ripple off the coast of California.
Axiom Mission 4 or AX-4, unloaded from the Orbitallabor at 7:15 a.m. ET (1115 GMT) on Monday, a 22.5-hour journey back onto the earth.
Splashdown is planned on Tuesday for 5:31 ET (0931 GMT) in the Pacific Ocean.
“Thank you for your support. You are incredible,” commander Peggy Whitson, Axiom employee and former Nasa astronaut told Flight Controllers in Houston.
Pilot Shubhanshu Shuckla from India and mission specialist Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary are also on board.
Axiom Space is a private company that organizes missions to the international space station and flies both wealthy individuals and in this case sponsored astronauts sponsored by their national governments.
After decades of absence, the mission was a return to space flight for its respective nations for the non-American trio.
They started on June 25th from the Kennedy Space Center for a two and a half week mission, in which they carried out around 60 scientific experiments.
For the increasing space of India, the flight served as an important springboard for its first independent occupation mission, which is planned for 2027 as part of the Gaganyaan program (“Sky Craft”) for 2027.
Shucla organized a video call with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a generally respected moment for soft power. He said that he shared the sweet court of Gajar Ka Halwa with his crew members on board the train station.
This is just SpaceX’s second crew recovery in the Pacific Ocean. The first occurred in March with the return of the crew 9 INS mission. Since then, SpaceX has constantly shifted to the Splashdowns on the west coast, and cited incidents in which rubble from Dragon’s tribe survived the atmospheric re -entry and crashed back to earth.
IA/MD
