Dragon separation confirmed: Axiom-4 successfully undocks, returns to Earth

Dragon separation confirmed: Axiom Space and NASA observed that the Axiom-4 has managed to undock and is heading to its way back to Earth.

In a blog on the mission news, NASA reported that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked at 7:15 a.m. EDT from the space-facing port of the International Space Station normally called Harmony module, completing the fourth commercial astronaut flight to the orbiting laboratory called Axiom Mission 4.

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It went on to state that the Dragon is gradually manoeuvring out of the station towards an orbital path that would bring the crew and its cargo safely to back the ground on Tuesday, July 15 with a splashdown offshore California.

Axiom Space during their live session on X pointed out that the Axiom-4 mission had already had over 60 scientific projects and over 20 outreach activities.

The confirmation was also made by Spacex in an X post.

As it posted on X it observed that now the spacecraft would be conducting a series of departure burns to creep out of International Space Station.

It commented that Dragon was going re-entry to the Earth atmosphere and would splash down near California in about 22.5 hours.

The spacecraft will be piloted by Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, the first astronaut to have visited ISS, and a member of the crew in the mission. The crew has started the departure operations with the hatch being closed and all the crewmembers are on their way into the spaceship.

Prior to the departure, at a farewell ceremony, ISS Commander Takuya Onishi spoke about the importance of the crew members at the ISS and showed his gratitude and admiration, based on the co-operative spirit on board of the ISS.

"Peggy, Shux, Suave, Tibor, we really enjoyed your company and thank you so much for bringing so much joy, excitement, inspiration and other positive ways to make our experience here even better, and your dedication to science and your profession definitely set a new standard for private astronaut missions. We hope you enjoyed your time here and hope that the time you spent here will become unforgettable moments in your life," he said.

Commander Whitson answered Onishi with thanks, saying, "We really enjoyed ourselves up here. It was an amazing experience... It's special to work with folks who became our friends, and the camaraderie and teaching were really exceptional."

Earlier in the day, Group Captain Shukla made an awe-inspiring farewell message at the ISS as most members of Ax-4 prepare to travel back to the planet.

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In a more modern form, he even cited the well-known sentence of the first Indian in space, Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, saying, "Aaj ka Bharat abhi bhi saare jahaan se acha dikhta hai" (Today's India is still more splendid than the entire world)."

Ax-4 crew, a flight that included a research and outreach component onboard ISS, consisted of Commander Peggy Whitson, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, of Poland, and Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) astronaut, Tibor Kapu.

According to NASA, the Dragon spacecraft will deliver back to Earth more than 580 pounds of cargo, parts of NASA hardware to be brought back to Earth and data of more than 60 experiments performed during the mission.

The Axiom Mission 4 took place on June 25 with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Docking of Dragon with the ISS occurred earlier than planned on June 26 at 4 05 pm IST, docking a few hours earlier than expected at the space-facing port of Harmony module of the station.

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