WASHINGTON: The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, which made history when its crew conducted the first spacewalk by non-government astronauts, concluded early Sunday with a splashdown off the coast of Florida.
The Dragon spacecraft plunged into the ocean at 3:37 am, a webcast of the arrival showed, with a recovery team deploying in the pre-dawn darkness to retrieve the capsule and crew. The capsule was lifted from the water and onto the recovery vessel half a hour later.
After brief medical checks, a smiling and waving SpaceX engineer Anna Menon was the first of the crew to exit, followed by engineer Sarah Gillis, pilot Scott Poteet and commander Jared Isaacman. A helicopter was due to transport them to land. "Happy, healthy, home," the Polaris Program wrote on X.
The four-member team led by fintech billionaire Isaacman launched Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center, 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 1,400 kilometers -- more than three times higher than the International Space Station and the furthest humans had ever traveled from Earth since the Apollo missions to the Moon.
"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.
He went back inside after a few minutes and was replaced by a second astronaut, SpaceX engineer Gillis, who, like Isaacman, performed a series of mobility tests on SpaceX's sleek, next-generation suits.
Mission pilot Poteet and SpaceX engineer Menon remained strapped in throughout as they monitored vital support systems.
It marked a "giant leap forward" for the commercial space industry as well as another triumphant achievement for SpaceX.
Founded in 2002, the company has quickly outpaced its legacy competitors, now thriving as one of NASA's prime contractors -- thanks in large part to owner and CEO Elon Musk's fervent drive to colonize Mars. — AFP
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