For the non-American crew, the mission marked a return to crewed spaceflight for his or her respective nations after many years.
A SpaceX capsule carrying astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary and the US has landed in California, finishing the 20-day Axiom Mission 4.
The crew undocked from the Worldwide House Station (ISS) on Monday and landed on earth on Tuesday after a 22-hour journey.
The return flight concluded the fourth ISS mission organised by US startup Axiom House in collaboration with SpaceX, the non-public rocket enterprise of billionaire Elon Musk.
For the non-American trio, the mission marked a return to crewed spaceflight for his or her respective nations after many years.
The crew launched from the Kennedy House Middle within the US state of Florida on June 25 for a mission the place they carried out about 60 scientific experiments.
“Thanks for the nice trip … Joyful to be again,” Commander Peggy Whitson, an Axiom worker and former NASA astronaut, mentioned after the splashdown within the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.
Whitson, 65, retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering profession that included changing into the US house company’s first feminine chief astronaut and the primary girl ever to command an ISS expedition.
Additionally on board had been pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
For rising house energy India, the participation of Shukla, an Indian air pressure pilot, is seen by India’s house program as a precursor, of types, to the debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, deliberate for 2027.
I be part of the nation in welcoming Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla as he returns to Earth from his historic mission to House. As India’s first astronaut to have visited Worldwide House Station, he has impressed a billion desires by means of his dedication, braveness and pioneering…
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 15, 2025
Uznanski-Wisniewski is a Polish astronaut assigned to the European House Company, whereas Kapu is a part of his nation’s Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) programme, although he’s not the primary individual of Hungarian descent to board the house station.
Billionaire Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian-born software program designer who turned a US citizen in 1982, has twice visited the ISS as an area vacationer, in 2007 and 2009, hitching rides on board Russian Soyuz capsules.
Axiom-4 additionally marks the 18th crewed spaceflight logged by SpaceX since 2020, when Musk’s rocket firm ushered in a brand new NASA period by offering American astronauts their first rides to house from US soil for the reason that finish of the house shuttle program 9 years earlier.
Axiom is one in every of a handful of firms growing a industrial house station of its personal, supposed to finally substitute the ISS, which NASA expects to retire in about 2030.