After having spent 433 hours—equivalent to 18 days or 288 orbits around the Earth—the crew of the Ax-4 Mission is back on Earth. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Grace, undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and began its return journey on 14 July 2025. Among the crew was Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, PhD. The astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on 15 July at around 11.30 a.m. CET.
Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, PhD, is returning to Earth with experiments developed by Polish research teams during the IGNIS scientific and technological mission. Two of these experiments were carried out by researchers from the University of Silesia in Katowice.
The AstroMentalHealth experiment was developed by the team led by Agnieszka Skorupa, PhD (Faculty of Social Sciences). The team includes other employees of USil Institute of Psychology: Mateusz Paliga, PhD, Assoc. Prof. (Deputy Head of the project) and Dagna Kocur, PhD, Assoc. Prof.
The project aimed to conduct research aboard the ISS and at the LunAres analogue space habitat in Piła, focusing on the impact of space isolation and the conditions on the station on human mental health and the psychological functioning of astronauts during a short-term space mission. The outcomes may come in handy during the selection and training of future astronauts.
The other experiment is called Yeast TardigradeGene, implemented by the Consortium of three universities: the University of Szczecin (project coordinator), Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the University of Silesia in Katowice. The aim of the project was to send a new strain of yeast to the International Space Station to test how it performs in microgravity conditions and how it responds to radiation. Astronaut Sławosz Uznański‑Wiśniewski was overseeing the Yeast TardigradeGene experiment during the entire mission. He was the one to place the payload with the yeast culture into the Columbus module.
Read more about experiments:
- AstroMentalHealth: https://us.edu.pl/kosmiczny-eksperyment-psychologow-z-us-astromentalhealth/
- Yeast TardigradeGene: https://us.edu.pl/gen-kosmicznych-piratow-yeast-tardigradegene/
Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski with the payload for the Yeast Tardigrade Gene experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) during the Axiom Mission 4 | Photo: Axiom Space/ESA/NASA/POLSA