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Watch | Moment Dragon spacecraft carrying Shubhanshu Shukla splashed down
The crew has returned with over 580 pounds of cargo, which includes NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments conducted during their two-week mission.
The Axiom-4 mission crew, which includes Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, has returned to Earth as the SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft splashed down off the coast of San Diego, California at around 3 pm (Indian time) today.
The crew, which took off on June 25 after multiple delays, has returned after spending nearly three weeks on the International Space Station. Shubhanshu Shukla return live updates
Indian Air Force Group Captain and ISRO astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla created history with the Axiom 4 mission by becoming only the second Indian to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma and first ever Indian to travel to the International Space Station.
The video of the moment the splashdown took place shows Dragon aircraft's four parachutes deployed as it makes its way down towards the Pacific Ocean gradually.
The crew has returned to Earth after a long 22-and-a-half hours to journey. The spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at around 4.50pm IST on Monday after spending 18 days there. The crew will go under the acclimatisation process for a few days now.
Apart from India's Shubhanshu Shukla, who piloted the mission, the crew includes United States' Peggy Whitson, European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut Slawosz "Suave" Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, and Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) astronaut Tibor Kapu. The mission took off from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
The crew has returned with over 580 pounds of cargo, which includes NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments conducted during their two-week mission, according to NASA.
The Axiom-4 mission “realized the return” to human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary, with each nation’s first government-sponsored flight in more than 40 years. While Ax-4 marks these countries' second human spaceflight mission in history, it became the first time all three nations executed a mission on board the International Space Station.
