Veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson and three international crewmates made a safe return to Earth early Tuesday morning, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The mission, dubbed Axiom-4, marked a series of milestones for commercial spaceflight and for the countries represented onboard.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down into the Pacific Ocean with its parachutes deployed.
The capsule, named “Grace” by its crew, touched down at approximately 2:30 a.m. PDT (10:30 a.m. BST) after a fiery 22-hour descent from orbit. The spacecraft had undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) early Monday, capping an 18-day mission in low Earth orbit. The return was broadcast live via a joint SpaceX-Axiom webcast, with infrared cameras capturing the moment as parachutes deployed and slowed the vehicle to a gentle 15 mph (24 km/h) splashdown.
Leading the mission was Peggy Whitson, 65, a trailblazing NASA veteran and now director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space. Whitson, who became the first female commander of the ISS and NASA’s first female chief astronaut during her tenure, has now completed five trips to space, extending her U.S. record to nearly 700 cumulative days in orbit.
Whitson was joined by a trio of first-time spacefarers:
Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, an Indian Air Force pilot representing India’s growing space ambitions.
Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, 41, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut from Poland.
Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary’s HUNOR (Hungarian to Orbit) program.
For India, Poland, and Hungary, Axiom-4 marked their first crewed missions to the ISS, and the first human spaceflights for each country’s government space program in more than four decades.
The crew brought back scientific samples from over 60 microgravity experiments conducted during their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory. These experiments covered a wide range of disciplines, from biomedical studies to materials science, and will now be analyzed by researchers on Earth.
The flight was the fourth privately organized ISS mission by Axiom Space, a Houston-based aerospace firm founded by former NASA officials. Axiom has quickly become a leader in the commercial human spaceflight sector, partnering with SpaceX and national space agencies to launch astronauts from around the globe into orbit.
The Axiom-4 mission launched on June 25 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Crew Dragon “Grace,” the fifth spacecraft in SpaceX’s human-rated fleet. The capsule docked at the ISS a day later, where the crew joined the station’s Expedition 71 team: three NASA astronauts, one Japanese astronaut, and three Russian cosmonauts.
This return also marks the 18th crewed mission flown by SpaceX since 2020, when it began providing human spaceflight services for NASA following the retirement of the space shuttle program.
Notably, the mission strengthens India’s preparation for its upcoming Gaganyaan program, which is aiming to conduct its first crewed orbital flight in 2027. Shukla’s participation is viewed as a critical stepping stone toward that goal.
While Hungarian-born billionaire Charles Simonyi previously visited the ISS twice as a space tourist in 2007 and 2009, Kapu’s flight is the first to represent Hungary in an official government-backed capacity. Uznański-Wiśniewski’s flight marks Poland’s first human space mission since the Soviet-led Interkosmos era of the 1980s.
Axiom’s broader ambitions include developing a commercial space station intended to succeed the ISS, which NASA plans to retire around 2030. With each mission, the company moves closer to creating a sustainable, privately funded presence in low Earth orbit — one that could support scientific research, industrial activity, and international collaboration well into the next decade.
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