(Radio Iowa) – The Axiom 4 spacecraft carrying Iowa native astronaut Peggy Whitson and three crewmates is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station as soon as today (Thursday) to make the flight home, with splashdown planned in the Pacific Ocean. During an Axiom Space interview earlier this week, the 65-year-old Whitson said her team has made excellent progress on some 60 experiments during the two-week research mission on the orbiting laboratory. “One of Shux’s (Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla) experiments is growing microalgae, and they can be used in potentially future space missions as a food supplement, got lots of nutrients and things in it,” Whitson says. “And speaking of food, Tibor (Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu) is also growing radishes, and he’s doing a great job with the radishes and the miniature wheat.”

Whitson says she’s been particularly focused on advancing a breast cancer study nicknamed CLEO, a project she started during her first Axiom mission in May of 2023. “We’re continuing on the Cancer in Low Earth Orbit study,” she says, “where we’re growing cancer cells and treating them with two different types of drugs to see if they will be more effective at affecting and stopping the replication of the cancer cells.” The American Cancer Society estimates more than 300-thousand new breast cancer cases will be diagnosed nationwide this year, and the risks are one-in-eight that the average American woman will develop breast cancer.

Whitson says the cancer research they’re doing on this mission is promising. “We had previously, on Axiom 2 and 3, some very interesting results, and so this time it’s actual breast tissue from a subject on the ground that we’re testing the drugs against,” Whitson says, “so I’m very excited about those research results.” Whitson, who grew up on a farm near Beaconsfield, is completing her second mission to the orbiting station with Axiom Space, following three NASA missions. She retired from the agency in 2018.

Considered the United States’ most experienced astronaut, Whitson has now spent some 690 days in space, more than any other American.