Historic SpaceX private astronaut mission splashes down off US coast
The team had managed to hit a peak altitude of 1400km, the furthest humans have travelled from Earth since the Apollo missions to the Moon
The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, which made history when its crew conducted the first spacewalk by non-government astronauts, splashed down off the coast of Florida early on Sunday.
The Dragon spacecraft landed in the ocean at 3:37am (0737 GMT), a webcast of the splashdown showed, with a recovery team deploying in the predawn darkness to retrieve the capsule and crew.
The four-member team led by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman launched on Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Centre, quickly journeying deeper into the cosmos than any humans in the past half century as they ventured into the dangerous Van Allen radiation belt.
They hit a peak altitude of 1,400km (870 miles), more than three times higher than the International Space Station and the furthest humans had ever travelled from Earth since the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Then on Thursday, with their Dragon spacecraft’s orbit brought down to 434 miles, Isaacman swung open the hatch and climbed out into the void, gripping a structure called “Skywalker” as a breathtaking view of Earth unfolded before him.
“SpaceX, back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” he told mission control in Hawthorne, California, where teams erupted in applause.
