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LOS ANGELES: Retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson made a safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean early Tuesday after her fifth trip to the International Space Station (ISS). She was accompanied by colleagues from India, Poland, and Hungary, returning from their countries’ inaugural ISS missions.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-person team touched down in calm waters off the Southern California coast around 2:30 AM PDT (09:30 GMT) after a fiery reentry that capped a 22-hour descent from orbit.
This return flight marked the conclusion of Axiom Space’s fourth ISS mission, conducted in partnership with SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, based near Los Angeles.
The return was broadcast live via a joint SpaceX and Axiom webcast.
Visible through the darkness and light fog with infrared cameras, two sets of parachutes slowed the capsule’s final descent to approximately 15 mph (24 kph) just before it splashed down near San Diego.
Just moments before landing, the spacecraft hurtled through Earth’s lower atmosphere like a mechanical meteor, generating enough friction to heat the exterior to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,927 degrees Celsius). The astronauts’ flight suits are designed to keep them cool amid the rising cabin temperatures.
Leading the Axiom-4 crew was Whitson, 65, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a groundbreaking career, during which she became the first female chief astronaut of the U.S. space agency and the first woman to command an ISS expedition.
Shortly after landing, Whitson communicated with mission control, stating that the crew was “happy to be back.” A recovery vessel was promptly dispatched to secure the capsule and lift it from the ocean onto the ship’s deck.
The crew would be removed from the capsule one by one to undergo medical checkups, before being transported to shore, a process that was expected to take about an hour.
A Diverse Team
Whitson, now the director of human spaceflight for Axiom, holds the U.S. record for the most time spent in space, with a total of 695 days across three previous NASA missions, a fourth flight as commander of the Axiom-2 crew in 2023, and her fifth mission leading Axiom-4.
The Axiom-4 crew also included Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, from India; Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, 41, from Poland; and Tibor Kapu, 33, from Hungary.
They returned carrying scientific samples from over 60 microgravity experiments conducted during their 18-day stay at the ISS. These samples are scheduled to be sent to researchers on Earth for final analysis.
This launch marked the first human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary in over 40 years and was the first mission to send astronauts from their respective governmental space programs to the ISS.
Shukla, an Indian Air Force pilot, is viewed by India’s space program as a stepping stone towards its anticipated crewed Gaganyaan mission, set for 2027.
Uznanski-Wisniewski is a Polish astronaut affiliated with the European Space Agency, while Kapu is part of Hungary’s Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) program, although he is not the first Hungarian-descendant astronaut to visit the ISS.
Notably, billionaire Charles Simonyi, who was born in Hungary and became a U.S. citizen in 1982, twice traveled to the ISS as a space tourist in 2007 and 2009, with rides on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
However, unlike many wealthy individuals who self-fund their journeys to space, Simonyi did not fly on behalf of Hungary or any government entity.
The newly commissioned capsule utilized for Axiom-4, affectionately named “Grace” by its crew, was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on June 25, marking the fifth addition to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon fleet.
Upon docking with the ISS on June 26, the Axiom-4 team was welcomed by a rotating crew of seven members, which included three U.S. astronauts, one Japanese crew member, and three Russian cosmonauts. The two crews parted ways early on Monday when the Crew Dragon Grace undocked to begin its return trip.
Axiom-4 also represents SpaceX’s 18th crewed spaceflight since 2020, when Musk’s company marked a new era for NASA, providing American astronauts with their first rides to space from U.S. soil since the conclusion of the space shuttle program nine years earlier.
Axiom, co-founded by a former ISS program manager, is a nine-year-old venture that continues to facilitate the flight of astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into low Earth orbit. The company is also one of the few organizations working on developing a commercial space station to eventually replace the ISS, which NASA plans to retire around 2030.
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