Minutes after Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla (Shux) returned to Earth with Grace — the

Dragon capsule

the

Axiom-4

crew members were travelling in — splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego in Southern California, around 3.02pm, the SpaceX and Axiom Space recovery crew got to work.At 3.07pm, Peggy Whitson radioed to mission control that the crew was ready for recovery and by 3.10pm, the recovery boats reached Grace. The recovery personnel, wearing PPE suits, first checked for hazardous gases around Grace before beginning rigging the capsule at 3.15pm, as flight surgeons stood by for the initial medical tests to be conducted.Some 14 minutes later, between 3.29pm and 3.30pm, Grace was nested on the recovery ship Shannon, when the recovery teams began some routine leak checks and de-rigging to ensure it is safe for the crew to egress or exit the capsule from the side hatch.By 3.37pm Grace was being moved from its initial place on Shannon to a deck where the crew was expected to be recovered. Between 3.40pm and 3.41pm, the recovery personnel opened the side hatch and began preparations to allow the crew to egress/exit.

At 3.49pm, mission commander Peggy Whitson slid out of the capsule with a smile, followed by Shux at 3.52pm and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski and Tibor Kapu in the next couple of minutes. Once this was complete, the process to take them to land via a helicopter unfolded. That is expected to take several minutes. Earlier, before the splashdown, at around 2.07pm, Grace began the de-orbit burn which lasted 18 minutes, and by 2.27pm, the capsule jettisoned the trunk (with solar panels and radiators), and closed the nose cone by 2.33pm.Several minutes later, at around 2.59pm, Grace deployed the drogue parachutes and about a minute later the four main parachutes got deployed. In a three-minute operation, these parachutes together reduced Grace’s velocity before the splashdown.Grace, which had undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) at 4.45pm on Monday, carried more than 580 tonnes of cargo, including the 60+ experiments during its 22.5-hour journey back to Earth.Soon after undocking, Grace had performed the first departure burn at 4.46pm for 16 seconds. The second departure burn (20 seconds) was carried out at 4.51pm, following which the four astronauts got out of the space suits and got into “comfortable clothes” for the 22.5-hour journey.Minutes after the undocking, mission commander Peggy Whitson radioed “Godspeed” and hoped for a safe return to Earth. Including the first two, Grace was scheduled to perform four departure burns spread over 90 minutes to get away from the ISS and enter a new orbit. From there, the capsule maintained the orbit until well past noon on Tuesday. Ground teams continuously monitored Grace and gave multiple “go”, “no-go” commands until the de-orbit burn.Among other things, the teams checked for weather conditions to ensure that both the crew and the recovery teams are able to operate safely at the recovery site, off the coast of California.Key weather parametres that teams watched out for was rain or lightning at the recovery site. They also looked at the wind speed, which should not be more than 10 miles per hour.