New Delhi, July 15, 2025 – Today, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and the Axiom-4 crew made it back to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after an 18-day stay on the International Space Station (ISS). This is a huge deal for India, as Shukla becomes only the second Indian to ever visit the ISS, following Rakesh Sharma’s trip back in 1984.
The Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) kicked off with a launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The team, which included commander Peggy Whitson, Shubhanshu Shukla as the mission pilot, and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary, lifted off on June 27, 2025. But things didn’t go smoothly at first; they had to wait because of a potential pressure leak in the ISS’s Zvezda module, which extended their pre-flight quarantine to one of the longest ever.
Up on the ISS, the crew was busy with all sorts of experiments and tech tests, mostly focusing on life sciences and how different countries can work together in space. Shubhanshu Shukla, who’s a seasoned test pilot with the Indian Air Force and has logged over 2,000 hours of flight time, was right in the thick of it, helping to show off India’s growing role in space exploration.
The trip back started with the Crew Dragon undocking from the ISS. The spacecraft, equipped with four parachutes, made its way down to the Pacific Ocean near California, where it splashed down around 9:35 AM IST. People watched the whole thing live, seeing the Dragon capsule hit the water and mark the end of the mission.
This success really highlights how reliable SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is, especially since it’s been used for several crewed missions since 2020. It’s all part of NASA’s plan to keep the ISS staffed through private missions, which is pretty cool.
Shubhanshu Shukla’s return is a real proud moment for India. It shows how far the country has come in space tech and how well it’s working with other space agencies around the world. He trained hard at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia to get ready for this, and it paid off.
Now that they’re back, the crew is going through all the usual post-mission stuff, and everyone’s eager to hear about what they learned up there. This mission isn’t just a personal win for Shubhanshu Shukla; it’s a big step forward for India’s space ambitions. It’s exciting to think about what this could mean for the future.