Shukla's journey home begins

Monday marked the end of a historic 20-day space mission for Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla who, along with three Axiom-4 (Ax-4) crew members, took off for a 22.5-hour return journey to Earth.

- Snehal Fernandes

At 4.45pm IST, the Dragon Grace spacecraft with commander Peggy Whitson, mission pilot Shukla and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu autonomously undocked from space-facing port on the Harmony module of the International Space Station (ISS) where the crew spent 18 days.

The spacecraft then performed a series of departure burns to move away from the orbiting laboratory. Grace, after conducting several orbit-lowering manoeuvre and jettisoning the trunk, will reenter the Earth's atmosphere for a splashdown off the coast of California at 3.01pm IST on Tuesday.

The process of return of the fourth private astronaut’s mission started at 2pm IST with the crew entering the SpaceX’s Grace capsule before hatch closure. At 2.10pm, Shukla floated in, preceded by Whitson and followed by Uznański-Wiśniewski and Kapu.