By Yasin Gungor
ISTANBUL (AA) - 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.
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."