Indian astronaut Shukla back home safely

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.

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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 reentered 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.