BREAKING: Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu landed after long mission is space – UPDATED, VIDEOS, PHOTOS

The SpaceX Dragon space capsule carrying members of the Axiom-4 mission, including Hungarian research astronaut Tibor Kapu, landed off the coast of California at 11.31am Hungarian time on Tuesday.

The space capsule entered the atmosphere at a speed of more than 27,000kmh, when communication with the astronauts was interrupted for around 7 minutes. About 4 minutes before splashdown, two smaller stabilising parachutes opened, followed by the four large main parachutes. The SpaceX Shannon recovery vessel and speedboats set off for the landing site, and after safety checks, the space capsule will be lifted onto the rescue ship.

• Hungary’s man in space: Tibor Kapu calls Earth view ‘a miracle’

Axiom Mission 4 crew undocks from space station for return to Earth

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at 1115GMT on Monday, completing the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory. The Axiom Mission 4 crew is returning to Earth after 18 days in space, targeting a splashdown off the California coast Tuesday, the Turkish Anadolu News Agency wrote.

Commander Peggy Whitson, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, and Mission Specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski and Tibor Kapu closed the hatch between Dragon and the station at 0907GMT in preparation for departure. The crew completed 288 orbits around Earth, covering nearly 12.2 million kilometers (7.6 million miles) during their approximately 433-hour mission, according to Axiom Space.

Dragon is slowly maneuvering away from the station’s Harmony module into an orbital track for the roughly 22.5-hour journey home. The spacecraft is returning with more than 263 kilograms (580 pounds) of cargo, including NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments done during the mission.

Axiom Space described the mission as uniting people from across the globe, stating: “Their time in space is a reminder that when nations work side by side, we can go farther – not just in distance, but in what we’re capable of achieving together.”

HUN-REN space experiments ‘successful’

HUN-REN space experiments such as the observation of the upper atmosphere electrical activities taking place in the Earth’s night hemisphere carried out on the International Space Station by Hungarian research astronaut Tibor Kapu, who returned to Earth on Tuesday, have proved to be spectacularly successful, the institute said in a statement.

Among the experiments, Kapu recorded videos of lightning activity and related electrical flashes of light, so-called FEF phenomena, that appear above thunderstorm clouds for the HUN-REN Geophysics and Space Research Institute.

The images are expected to be helpful in verifying detection efficiency in ground-based lightning detection networks and applying knowledge of electrical activity of thunderstorms in climate research, the statement noted.

Meanwhile, on behalf of the HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Mathematical Research Institute, Kapu conducted measurements related to a new tracking method which can be used in medicine, robotics, and even video games, and the mission provided an opportunity for longer measurements of calibration data from two complete orbits. Preliminary results can be expected in a few weeks once NASA has released the data. The algorithms derived from the experiment may, in addition, aid space navigation and the joint coordination of spacecraft during docking, the statement added.