NEW DELHI, Jul 14: Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and three fellow crew members of the Axiom-4 mission on Monday boarded the Dragon Grace spacecraft and suited up to begin their return journey to Earth after an 18-day stay at the International Space Station (ISS).
Joining Shukla, the mission pilot, are commander Peggy Whitson and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary. The hatch connecting Dragon Grace to the ISS was closed at 2:37 pm IST, with undocking scheduled for 4:35 pm IST.
The final departure procedures were broadcast live by NASA, showing the crew performing system checks before leaving the orbital laboratory.
The Dragon spacecraft’s descent is fully automated. After undocking, it will conduct a series of carefully timed engine burns to safely move away from the ISS and initiate re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. As part of the preparations, the capsule’s trunk section will be detached, and the heat shield oriented forward to withstand atmospheric temperatures reaching up to 1,600 degrees Celsius.
During descent, parachutes will deploy in two phases: initial stabilising chutes at about 5.7 km altitude, followed by the main parachutes around two km. Splashdown is expected off the coast of California at approximately 3:01 pm IST on Tuesday, around 22.5 hours after undocking. The capsule will then be recovered by a dedicated ship.
The Axiom-4 mission launched on June 25 atop a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from Florida, marking another milestone for commercial space missions and international collaboration on the ISS.
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