Cape Canaveral, Florida: Peggy Whitson, a retired NASA astronaut turned private space explorer, and her three Axiom-4 crewmates from India, Poland, and Hungary has begun their return journey to Earth on July 14 after completing their stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The Crew Dragon capsule carrying the team undocked from the ISS at 7:15 am ET, marking the end of the latest mission organized by Texas-based Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. If all proceeds as scheduled, the capsule will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere after a 22-hour flight and parachute into the Pacific Ocean off California’s coast around 5:30 am ET (0930 GMT) on July 15.
Shortly before undocking, the astronauts, wearing their black-and-white helmeted flight suits, were shown in live footage strapped into the cabin as the capsule orbited 260 miles (418 km) above India’s east coast. Brief rocket bursts gently propelled the capsule away from the space station.
Dragon and the @Axiom_Space Ax-4 crew are on track to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down off the coast of San Diego at ~2:31 a.m. PT tomorrow.
Dragon will also announce its arrival with a brief sonic boom prior to splashing down in the Pacific Ocean pic.twitter.com/dS3KuHVWdH
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 15, 2025
Grace Capsule
The mission was led by 65-year-old Whitson, alongside crewmates Shubhanshu Shukla (39) from India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski (41) from Poland, and Tibor Kapu (33) from Hungary. Over 18 days on the ISS, the team conducted dozens of scientific experiments in microgravity.
This flight marks the fourth such mission since 2022 by Axiom Space, a Houston-headquartered startup aiming to expand private and government-backed astronaut access to low-Earth orbit.
For India, Poland, and Hungary, the mission represents the first government-sponsored human spaceflight in over 40 years and the first-time astronauts from those countries visited the ISS.
The capsule used for this mission, nicknamed ‘Grace’ by the crew, was launched on June 25 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is the fifth spacecraft in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon fleet and made its debut with this mission.
Axiom-4 is also the 18th crewed spaceflight conducted by SpaceX since 2020, when it began launching astronauts from US soil following the retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle program.
The multinational Axiom-4 crew was under the command of Whitson, a pioneering figure in US space history. Retired from NASA in 2018 after serving as the agency’s first female chief astronaut and the first woman to command an ISS expedition.
Now Axiom’s Director of Human Spaceflight, Whitson, had already spent 675 days in space across three NASA missions and a 2023 flight as commander of Axiom-2. This mission extends her US spaceflight record by nearly three more weeks.
Axiom Space, founded nine years ago by a former NASA ISS program manager, is also working on the development of a commercial space station intended to succeed the ISS, which NASA plans to decommission around 2030.
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