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Space station mission was first for three countries

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NASA retiree turned Axiom commander logs 5th flight to

orbit

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Axiom-4 mission marked 18th human crewed flight for SpaceX

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES, July 15 (Reuters) - NASA retiree turned

private astronaut Peggy Whitson splashed down safely in the

Pacific early on Tuesday after her fifth trip to the

International Space Station, joined by crewmates from India,

Poland and Hungary returning from their countries' first ISS

mission.

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-member

team parachuted into the sea off the coast of California at

around 2:30 a.m. PDT (0930 GMT) following a fiery reentry

through Earth's atmosphere that capped a 22-hour descent from

orbit.

The return flight concluded the fourth ISS mission organized

by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in collaboration with SpaceX,

the private rocket venture of billionaire Elon Musk

headquartered near Los Angeles.

The mission finale, return flight was carried live by a

joint SpaceX-Axiom webcast.

Two sets of parachutes, visible through the darkness

with infrared cameras, were expected to slow the capsule's final

descent to about 15 mph (24 kph) moments before its splashdown

off San Diego.

Minutes earlier, the spacecraft had been streaking like

a mechanical meteor through Earth's lower atmosphere, generating

enough frictional heat to send temperatures outside the capsule

soaring to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,927 degrees Celsius). The

astronauts' flight suits are designed to keep them cool as the

cabin heats up.

The Axiom-4 crew was led by Whitson, 65, who retired from

NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included becoming

the U.S. space agency's first female chief astronaut and the

first woman ever to command an ISS expedition.

FOUR ASTRONAUTS, FOUR NATIONS

Now director of human spaceflight for Axiom, she had logged

675 days in space, a U.S. record, during three previous NASA

missions and a fourth flight to space as commander of the

Axiom-2 crew in 2023. Her latest mission commanding Axiom-4 will

extend her record by about three more weeks.

Rounding out the Axiom-4 crew were Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of

India, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor

Kapu, 33, of Hungary.

They are returning with a cargo of science samples from more

than 60 microgravity experiments conducted during their 18-day

visit to the ISS and due for shipment to researchers back on

Earth for final analysis.

For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked the first

human spaceflight of each country in more than 40 years and the

first mission ever to send astronauts from their government's

respective space programs to the ISS.

The participation of Shukla, an Indian air force pilot, is

seen by India's space program as a precursor of sorts to the

debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft,

planned for 2027.

Uznanski-Wisniewski is a Polish astronaut assigned to the

European Space Agency, while Kapu is part of his country's

Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) program, though he is not the first

person of Hungarian descent to board the space station.

Billionaire Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian-born software

designer who became a U.S. citizen in 1982, has twice visited

the ISS as a space tourist, in 2007 and 2009, hitching rides

aboard Russian Soyuz capsules.

But like many wealthy individuals from various countries who

have paid their own way for joyrides to space, Simonyi was not

flying on behalf of his homeland or any government.

Dubbed "Grace" by its crew, the newly commissioned capsule

flown for Axiom-4 was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center

in Cape Canaveral in Florida on June 25, becoming the fifth

vehicle in SpaceX's Crew Dragon fleet.

The Ax-4 team arrived at the ISS on June 26, welcomed

aboard by the station's latest rotating crew of seven occupants

- three U.S. astronauts, one Japanese crewmate and three Russian

cosmonauts. The two crews parted company again early on Monday

when Crew Dragon Grace undocked to begin its voyage home.

Axiom-4 also marks the 18th crewed spaceflight logged by

SpaceX since 2020, when Musk's rocket company ushered in a new

NASA era by providing American astronauts their first rides to

space from U.S. soil since the end of the space shuttle program

nine years earlier.

For Axiom, a 9-year-old venture co-founded by NASA's former

ISS program manager, the mission builds on its business of

putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign

governments into low-Earth orbit.

Axiom also is one of a handful of companies developing a

commercial space station of its own intended to eventually

replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.