Today's Edition
LOS ANGELES (REUTERS)
NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson splashed down safely in the Pacific early on Tuesday after her fifth trip to the International Space Station (ISS), joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary returning from each countries' first-ever ISS mission.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-member team parachuted into the sea off the coast of California at around 9:30am GMT, following a fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere that capped a 22-hour descent from orbit.
The return flight concluded the fourth ISS mission organised by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in collaboration with SpaceX, the private rocket venture of billionaire Elon Musk headquartered near Los Angeles.
The mission finale and return flight was carried live by a joint SpaceX-Axiom webcast.
The Axiom-4 crew was led by Whitson, 65, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included becoming the US space agency's first female chief astronaut, and the first woman ever to command an ISS expedition.
Rounding out the Axiom-4 crew were Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary.
They are returning with a cargo of science samples from more than 60 microgravity experiments, conducted during their 18-day visit to the ISS and due for shipment to researchers back on Earth for final analysis.
Crew Members
For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked the first human spaceflight of each country in more than 40 years, and the first mission ever to send astronauts from their government's respective space programs to the ISS.
The participation of Shukla, an Indian air force pilot, is seen by India's space program as a precursor of sorts to the debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, planned for 2027.
Uznanski-Wisniewski is a Polish astronaut assigned to the European Space Agency, while Kapu is part of his country's Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) programme.
Axiom Mission
The Ax-4 team arrived at the ISS on June 26, welcomed aboard by the station's latest rotating crew of seven occupants - three US astronauts, one Japanese crewmate, and three Russian cosmonauts. The two crews parted company again early on Monday when Crew Dragon Grace undocked to begin its voyage home.
For Axiom, a 9-year-old venture co-founded by NASA's former ISS program manager, the mission builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into low-Earth orbit.
Axiom also is one of a handful of companies developing a commercial space station of its own intended to eventually replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.
