Axiom-4 Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla meets family after 18-day mission

“Spaceflight is incredible – but nothing compares to holding your loved ones again,” he shared.

After spending 18 days on the International Space Station (ISS), during which he went around the Earth 288 times, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and his colleagues on the Axiom-4 mission began their 22-hour return journey to Earth on Monday afternoon.

After spending 433 hours at the ISS, the astronauts moved into their docked spacecraft around 2 pm India time. The preparations for the return journey took over two hours. The automatic undocking procedure that started at around 4:45 pm involved the spacecraft detaching the umbilical that connected it to the command, telemetry and power of the ISS. The spacecraft then released 12 hard capture hooks in two phases, which took around four minutes in total. After that, it moved away from the ISS using a series of engine burns.

Their journey back to Earth involves four thrusts by the on-board engines — a departure burn, a phasing burn to lower the orbit, another one to bring it to the required position for entering the Earth’s atmosphere, and then a de-orbit burn pushing the spacecraft into the Earth. After re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, the space capsule would be slowed down using parachutes to enable a controlled splashdown at the designated site in the Pacific Ocean.