Ax 4 Mission to splashdown early Tuesday morning

The four astronauts of Axiom Space's Ax 4 mission undocked from the International Space Station this morning, July 14, at 7:15 AM EDT (1115 UTC) and began its nearly 24 hours of maneuvers to splash down off California early Tuesday morning, 5:31 AM EDT, or 0931 UTC.  

This was the first flight of this Crew Dragon capsule and the tradition is the first crew to fly it gives the capsule a name; they chose Grace.  

Ax-4's commander is former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who is now Axiom's director of human spaceflight. "Space Station, Grace," Whitson said over the communication system as the Crew Dragon crossed out of the ISS's safety "keep-out sphere," "The Ax-4 crew wants to thank you very much for your support. You guys are amazing."

Her crewmates are pilot Shubhanshu "Shux" Shukla and mission specialists Sławosz "Suave" Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu. This was the first spaceflight for each of those three. But Ax-4 is Whitson's fifth mission to orbit and raises her current record for most cumulative days in space by an American to 695. 

I've been trying to track down information on exactly where "off California" the splash down will be.  It's easy to assume it will be somewhere near Vandenberg because of the existing infrastructure there - but that's purely speculation.  For example they won't use the drone ship that Falcon 9s land on to handle the Crew Dragon, but any port facility big enough to handle their drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) can handle the smaller ship used to recover the capsule.  The source article I used here says, "This will only be SpaceX's second West Coast crew recovery. The first was that of the Crew-9 ISS mission in March."  The problem is that's wrong.  Crew-9 splashed down in the Gulf of America close to Tallahassee, Florida.  That was the mission that launched with two empty seats to make room for "Butch and Suni" to come back after the Boeing Starliner fiasco.  

So I've got to say I don't know where it's landing, I only know why it's not landing off Florida or in the Gulf.  SpaceX has shifted permanently to the Pacific Ocean rather than Atlantic or Gulf recoveries, after a couple of instances of debris from Dragon's trunk surviving reentry and crashing back to Earth.  

Ax 4's Grace capsule just before undocking from the International Space Station July 14, 2025. (Image credit: NASA)

And speaking of that whole Starliner/Crew-9 mess, in March NASA announced that Zena Cardman, who had been bumped from her position as commander for Crew-9 will command Crew-11, now scheduled to launch Thursday, July 31 at 12:09 PM EDT, from pad 39A.  She and Stephanie Wilson were bumped off Crew-9 to make the two empty seats for Butch and Suni to use for their ride home.  Stephanie Wilson is not on this mission and the sources I have didn't mention a next flight for her.