Ax-4 crew on board Dragon spacecraft, piloted by Grp Capt Shukla, on track for 3 pm touchdown

HOUSTON: After spending almost 20 days in space with almost 19 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Axiom-4 mission (Ax-4), Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian astronaut to visit the ISS, along with this crew for the mission, is set for a splashdown on Earth off the coast of San Diego, California, around 3 pm IST on Tuesday.

According to a post on X by SpaceX, the crew, aboard its Dragon spacecraft are on track to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, with their arrival to be announced with a “brief sonic boom” ahead of their splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

“Dragon and the Axiom Space Ax-4 crew are on track to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down off the coast of San Diego at ~2:31 a.m. PT tomorrow. Dragon will also announce its arrival with a brief sonic boom prior to splashing down in the Pacific Ocean”, SpaceX stated.

The spacecraft will now execute a series of departure burns to move away from the @Space_Station. Dragon will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and splash down in ~22.5 hours off the coast of California pic.twitter.com/5Wmqr3f63Z

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 14, 2025

The crew, aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, Grace, are on their return journey, which will take approximately 22.5 hours back to Earth from the ISS. On Monday, the Ax-4 successfully undocked and marked their way back to Earth, as observed by Axiom Space and NASA.

In an informative blog about the mission updates, NASA informed that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked at 7:15 am EDT, or 4.45 pm IST, from the space-facing port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module, completing the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Axiom Mission 4. It further noted that the Dragon is slowly manoeuvring away from the station into an orbital track that will return the crew and its cargo safely to Earth, targeting a splashdown today.

Axiom Space, in its live session on X, noted that the Axiom-4 mission saw over 60 scientific studies and more than 20 outreach events.

The Ax-4 crew, comprising Commander Peggy Whitson, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut Slawosz “Suave” Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, and Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) astronaut Tibor Kapu, had been actively engaged in research and outreach activities aboard the ISS as part of the mission during the past 18-days.

As per NASA, the Dragon spacecraft will return to Earth with more than 580 pounds of cargo, including NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments conducted during the mission.

Axiom Mission 4 was launched on June 25 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the ISS on June 26 at 4:05 pm IST, ahead of schedule, connecting to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. (ANI)