Nasa retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson and three crew mates from India, Poland and Hungary departed the International Space Station early on Monday and embarked on their return flight to Earth. A Crew Dragon capsule carrying the quartet undocked from the orbital laboratory at 7.15am ET, ending the latest ISS visit organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk’s California-headquartered rocket venture SpaceX. The Axiom astronauts, garbed in their helmeted white-and-black flight suits, were seen in live video footage strapped into the crew cabin shortly before the vehicle separated from the station, orbiting some 260 miles (418 km) over the east coast of India. Whitson, 65, and her three Axiom crew mates - Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary - spent 18 days aboard the space station conducting dozens of research experiments in microgravity. Now director of human spaceflight for Axiom, she had logged 675 days in space, a US record, during three previous Nasa missions and a fourth flight to space as commander of the Axiom-2 crew in 2023.