Axiom-4 astronauts return to earth
At 7:15 a.m. EST, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named Grace, undocked from the station.
The spacecraft is targeting its return to Earth on Tuesday. It will be returning with more than 580 pounds of cargo, including NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments from the mission, according to NASA.
Grace docked the ISS on June 26. The mission included research and science investigations aimed at further understanding of the microgravity environment. The crew's mission was extended by four days, it was initially scheduled for about two weeks.
The mission crew was Shubhanshu Shukla, Slawosz Wisniewski and Tiber Kapu first spaceflight, but Peggy Whitson's, Axiom-4's commander's, fifth mission.
Grace is targeting to return off the coast of California. This is SpaceX's second West Coast crew recovery, the first one being Crew-9's mission in March.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
14 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
A Solar System Internet? Space Laser Test Moves Us Closer
Scientists at the European Space Agency used a laser to communicate with a spacecraft 165 million miles (265 million kilometers) away in deep space for the first time, marking a major step forward in their efforts to build optical communication systems for future missions to the Moon and beyond. Scientists at the Kryoneri Observatory near Athens, Greece, shot a powerful laser at NASA's Psyche mission, which then sent a return signal to the Helmos Observatory, which lies some 23 miles (37 km) away from the signal's origin. 'This is an amazing success. Through years of technological advancements, international standardisation efforts and adoption of innovative engineering solutions we have set a cornerstone of the Solar System Internet,' Mariella Spada, ESA's head of Ground systems Engineering and Innovation, said in a statement. To pull it off, mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used powerful navigation tools including the the Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging—a kind of interplanetary radio tracking—to provide the ESA with Psyche's exact position. Flight dynamics experts at the agency then designed the test while accounting for variables like air density, temperature, and the Earth's motion. Sections of Greece's airspace were also temporarily closed, just to be safe. 'Enabling this two-way optical handshake meant overcoming two major technical challenges: developing a laser powerful enough to hit a distant spacecraft with pinpoint accuracy; and building a receiver sensitive enough to detect the faintest return signal, sometimes just a few photons, after a journey of hundreds of millions of kilometres,' Sinda Mejri, project manager of the ESA's Ground Laser Receiver system, said. The signal relay is the first of four planned exchanges this summer as part of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications experiment aboard Psyche. On a mission to investigate a metal-rich asteroid beyond Mars, Psyche also carries the DSOC, a gold-capped laser transceiver designed to test long-distance communication systems for future space missions. In December 2023 for example, DSOC managed to beam a video of an orange tabby cat named Taters chasing a laser pointer some 19 million miles (31 million km) back to Earth—a technological feat of the highest order. Psyche itself uses radio to talk to its handlers on Earth, but laser communication systems could significantly speed up the conversation. While this test didn't involve sending any information to Psyche, optical communication systems can pack data into the oscillations of light waves in lasers, encoding messages into an optical signal that is carried to a receiver via infrared. These invisible beams—to our eyes at least—travel at the speed of light, carrying high-definition information from one point to another. This method enables data transmission rates some 10 to 100 times greater than the radio frequency systems used by spacecraft today, according to the agency. 'Combining this technology with the ones we have for radio frequency communications is essential to transmit the ever-increasing data output of the missions exploring the universe,' Andrea Di Mira, project manager of ESA's Ground Laser Transmitter system, said. The entire process requires extreme precision: Laser beams are much narrower than radio signals, which means that that the DCOS's laser reply needs to be aimed in such a way that it takes into account Earth's orbit to determine where the ground-based receiver will be by the time the signal reaches it. The experiment's success marks 'truly a leap step towards bringing terrestrial internet like high-speed connectivity to our deep-space spacecraft,' Rolf Densing, the agency's director of operations, said.
The Hill
23 minutes ago
- The Hill
Private spaceflight ends with a Pacific splashdown for astronauts from India, Poland and Hungary
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private spaceflight featuring the first astronauts in more than 40 years from India, Poland and Hungary came to a close Tuesday with a Pacific splashdown. Their SpaceX capsule undocked from the I nternational Space Station on Monday and parachuted into the ocean off the Southern California coast, less than 24 hours later. The crew of four launched nearly three weeks ago on a flight chartered by the Houston company Axiom Space. Axiom's Peggy Whitson, the most experienced U.S. astronaut, served as commander. Joining her were India's Shubhanshu Shukla, Poland's Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski and Hungary's Tibor Kapu, whose countries paid more than $65 million apiece for the mission. 'Thanks for the great ride and safe trip,' Whitson radioed moments after splashdown. Her record now stands at 695 days in space over five missions, longer than any other American or woman. The visiting astronauts conducted dozens of experiments in orbit while celebrating their heritage. The last time India, Poland and Hungary put anyone in space was during the late 1970s and 1980s, launching with the Soviets. They waved and smiled as they emerged from the capsule, one by one, into the early morning darkness. It was Axiom's fourth mission to the orbiting outpost since 2022, part of NASA's ongoing effort to open up space to more businesses and people. The company is one of several developing their own space stations to replace the current one. NASA plans to abandon the outpost in 2030, after more than 30 years of operation. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
2025 Pacing As Earth's Second Warmest Year Behind 2024, Report Says
The first six months of 2025 were Earth's second warmest on record, keeping 2025 on a pace to finish slightly behind 2024 for the planet's warmest year, according to just-released data from several agencies. June's warmth: June 2025's globally average temperature was 1.76 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, only 0.42 degrees cooler than the record warmest June in 2024 and 0.18 degrees cooler than the second warmest June in 2023, according to a report released Thursday by NOAA. Separate analysis from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies also found Earth had its third warmest June, behind the two previous Junes. Only Behind Last Year: With the first six months over, 2025 has a roughly 2 in 3 chance to be the planet's second warmest year on record, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather estimated in a post on Bluesky. NOAA similarly concluded "95% confidence" of a second to fourth warmest year on record in 2025 in their temperature rankings outlook. NOAA global temperature records date to 1850. Each month in 2025 has been at least among the top three warmest of those respective months, according to NOAA. January was the planet's warmest in 176 years, NOAA found. 2024 was the planet's warmest year in records dating to the late 19th century, according to both NOAA and NASA. (For even more granular weather data tracking in your area, view your 15-minute details forecast in our Premium Pro experience.) Above The Threshold? June 2025 was only the third in the last 24 months in which global temperatures were not more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels, according to the C3S. Despite that, the most recent 12-month period through June was more than 2.7 degrees above late 19th-century temperatures. That doesn't necessarily mean we've broken above the 2.7 degree limit agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. According to climate scientists, that would require that threshold to be topped for over a decade. But they also stress it means we're closer to that threshold than ever June was the warmest on record in Japan, as well as in dozens of cities in South Korea. It was the second warmest June in France and the United Kingdom. Spain smashed its national June heat record on June 28, when a high of 114.8 degrees was measured in El Granado, according to NOAA. In the U.S., it was the hottest June on record in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Yakutat, Alaska, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center. As you can see on the map below, parts of western Europe, Australia and Asia were record warm in the first six months. Hawaii had its hottest January-June on record, according to NOAA. Oceans still warm: Global ocean temperatures are still much warmer than in any years from 1979 through 2022, C3S found. C3S noted that since March 2023, global daily sea surface temperatures have been warmer than in other years prior. Among patches of ocean record warmth in the first six months of 2025 included swaths of the Philippine Sea, the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii, the northeast Atlantic Ocean near Ireland, the U.K. and Scandinavia, the western Mediterranean Sea, the Arctic Ocean from Greenland to Canada and the southern Indian Ocean. Despite all that, 2025's ocean warmth has been less extreme than the off-the-charts ocean warmth of 2023 and 2024, which included both record tropical Atlantic warmth and an El Niño, the periodic warming of water in the equatorial eastern and central Pacific Ocean. Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.
