On Tuesday, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, who made history by being the nation’s first person to reach the International Space Station, safely returns home.
As part of the Axiom Space Mission-4 (Ax-4), SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft “Grace” carrying IAF Group Captain Shukla and three other astronauts, smashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California at 3:01 p.m. IST (4:31 AM CT).
“Splashdown of Dragon confirmed – welcome back to Earth, AstroPeggy, Shux, astro_slawosz, and Tibi!” In a post on the social media site X, SpaceX stated.
Shukla, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski (Poland), Tibor Kapu (Hungary), and U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson boarded SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft “Grace” at 3:30 a.m. CT (2 PM IST) on Monday. On June 26, Shukla took a flight to the ISS. Additionally, he became the second Indian astronaut to reach space following the 1984 expedition of Rakesh Sharma.
The spacecraft returned to Earth’s atmosphere and underwent an 18-minute de-orbit burn over the Pacific Ocean. The spaceship lost communication signals for almost seven minutes during the astronauts’ blackout.
Detaching the capsule’s trunk and aligning the heat shield prior to atmospheric entry exposed the spacecraft to temperatures approaching 1,600 degrees Celsius as part of the final preparations.
First stabilizing chutes were released at around 5.7 km altitude at 2:57 pm IST, and then the main parachutes were released at approximately two kilometers before to splashdown.
Following Fram2’s return of Dragon recovery operations to the West Coast in April, SpaceX reported that this is Dragon’s second human spaceflight mission to splash down off the coast of California. The Atlantic Ocean was the location of earlier SpaceX splashdowns.
Shukla traveled an incredible 1.3 crore kilometers during his more than two weeks on board the ISS, completing almost 310 orbits, or 33 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
From the orbital lab, the team also saw more than 300 sunrises and sunsets.
On Monday, ISRO announced that astronaut Shukla had “achieved a milestone in the mission” by finishing all seven microgravity experiments and other scheduled tasks.
The national space agency reported that the experiments on the Indian strain of tardigrades, myogenesis, crop seeds, cyanobacteria, microalgae, methi and moong seed sprouting, and voyager display had all gone according to schedule.
Asha Shukla, his mother, expressed her sentiments, stating: “We must be able to see the excitement on our faces.” Since our son has finally returned to Earth today, we are incredibly excited and overcome with emotion. For this, I would like to thank everyone. Seeing my son after so many days is really emotional. We are really proud, and our excitement knows no bounds.
“To be honest, I couldn’t sleep last night; there was just so much excitement,” his sister Shuchi Mishra continued. Right now, I’m experiencing butterflies in my tummy. I’d like to thank everyone. This was the moment we had been waiting for. At last, he has returned. We are overjoyed.
The family’s excitement was also expressed by his father, Shambhu Dayal Shukla: “I want to thank God that he has finally landed back on Earth.” I also want to express my gratitude to everyone who has blessed our child. He came back from an area where he had little possibility of returning.
Shukla and his Axiom-4 crew returned from an 18-day stay at the orbiting laboratory, making Shukla the first Indian astronaut to live and work on the ISS.