New Delhi, July 15 (IANS) Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, who scripted history by becoming the first from the country to reach the International Space Station, returns safely back home on Tuesday.

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft “Grace” carrying IAF Group Captain Shukla and three other astronauts, part of the Axiom Space Mission-4 (Ax-4) splashed down in 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!” SpaceX said in a post on social media platform X.

Shukla, along with fellow astronauts Peggy Whitson (US), Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski (Poland), and Tibor Kapu (Hungary), boarded SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft “Grace” at 3:30 a.m. CT (2 PM IST) on Monday. Shukla flew to the ISS on June 26. He also became the second Indian astronaut to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma’s 1984 odyssey.

The 18-minute-long de-orbit burn took place over the Pacific Ocean as the spacecraft re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The astronauts also had a blackout period, where the spacecraft lost communication signals for about seven minutes.

Final preparations included detaching the capsule’s trunk and orienting the heat shield ahead of atmospheric entry, which exposed the spacecraft to temperatures nearing 1,600 degrees Celsius.

Parachutes deployed in two stages — first stabilising chutes at about 5.7 km altitude at 2:57 pm IST, followed by the main parachutes at roughly two km before splashdown.

SpaceX noted that it is Dragon’s second human spaceflight mission to splash down off the coast of California after Fram2 returned Dragon recovery operations to the West Coast in April. Previous SpaceX splashdowns took place in the Atlantic Ocean.

During his more than two weeks stay aboard the ISS, Shukla completed over 310 orbits, traversing an astounding 1.3 crore kilometres — equivalent to travelling 33 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

The crew also witnessed over 300 sunrises and sunsets from the orbital lab.

Meanwhile, ISRO on Monday noted that astronaut Shukla has completed all seven microgravity experiments and other planned activities, “achieving a milestone in the mission”.

“Experiments on Indian strain of tardigrades, myogenesis, sprouting of methi and moong seeds, cyanobacteria, microalgae, crop seeds, and voyager display have been completed as planned,” the national space agency said.

–IANS

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