Shubhanshu Shukla Set To Return To Earth: Date, Time, How To Watch And More Details

Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla is set to return to Earth after his 18-day stay at the International Space Station (ISS). He flew to the ISS as part of the commercial Axiom-4 mission. Shukla is the second Indian to go to space, after Rakesh Sharma in 1984.

The crew members of the Axiom-4 mission reached the ISS on June 26. Besides Shukla, the four-member team included mission commander Peggy Whitson, and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary.

The mission marked a return to space for India, Poland and Hungary after more than 40 years.

The crew will return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which also carried them to the ISS at the start of the mission. They boarded the spacecraft at 2 p.m. IST on Monday (July 14). NASA and Axiom-4 livestreamed the onboarding process of the astronauts, showing Shukla and the other crew members safely entering the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

“Undocking from the ISS is scheduled for no earlier than 6:05 a.m. CT (4:35 p.m. IST),” Axiom Space said in a statement.

The return of Shukla and his teammates will involve a 22.5-hour journey, with the splashdown expected off the coast of California at 3:01 p.m. IST on Tuesday (4:31 a.m. CT).

NASA has shared the streaming details of the Axiom-4 crew’s undocking from the ISS. Viewers can watch the procedure live on NASA’s YouTube channel, starting at 4:15 p.m.

Viewers can also watch it on the Axiom-4 YouTube channel:

On Sunday, other astronauts on the ISS held a farewell ceremony for the Axiom-4 team.

The Axiom-4 crew was sent to ISS to conduct nearly 60 experiments related to microgravity research, technology demos, and educational activities.

Born in 1985 in UP’s Lucknow, Shukla has also been chosen by ISRO to be one of the four astronauts of India’s own inaugural human space flight endeavour, the Gaganyaan mission.