SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn Crew Returns Home After Historic Mission

(CNN) – SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn crew has returned home, capping a five-day mission in orbit — which included the world’s first commercial spacewalk — with a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Crew Dragon capsule with four astronauts on board touched down on Florida’s Dry Tortugas coast at 3:37 a.m. ET on Sunday.

the Polaris Dawn mission made history By achieving the highest altitude a human has reached in five decades, the spacewalk early Thursday morning was the first time a privately funded and operated mission has completed such an effort.

But returning to Earth is one of the most dangerous parts of any space mission.

To get home safely, the Crew Dragon capsule performed what’s called an “orbit burn,” orienting itself as it prepared to pass through the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere.

The spacecraft then reached extremely high temperatures—up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius)—due to the pressure and friction caused by the collision with the air as it continued to travel at about 17,000 mph (27,000 km/h). However, the crew should have remained at comfortable temperatures, protected by the Crew Dragon’s heat shield, located at the bottom of the 4-meter-wide (13-foot-wide) capsule.

Airborne drag began to slow the vehicle before Crew Dragon deployed parachutes that slowed its descent further.

After falling into the sea, the ship briefly moved in the water until rescue teams waiting nearby towed it out of the ocean to a special boat known as the “Dragon’s Nest.” There, final safety checks were conducted before the crew disembarked from the capsule and began the journey back to the mainland.

crew Polaris Dawn It consists of the mission commander, Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of financial firm Shift4 Payments; his close friend and former U.S. Air Force pilot Scott “Kid” Poteet; and SpaceX operations engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.

The quartet began this mission at a record-breaking altitude, reaching an extended orbit around the Earth. Up to 870 miles (1,400 km). It is the highest orbit around the Earth ever reached by a human, surpassing the record set by NASA’s Gemini 11 mission in 1966, which reached 853 miles (1,373 km).

In this high-risk activity, also called an extravehicular activity or EVA, the Crew Dragon capsule was completely depressurized before Isaacman opened the hatch, exposing the group to the vacuum of space.

Isaacman and Gillis exited the spacecraft for about 10 minutes each, performing a series of tests to understand the functionality of the EVA suits, before returning to the Crew Dragon spacecraft and closing the hatch.

The spacewalk apparently went off without any major problems. “Back home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here — it looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said after getting his first look at the outside of the spacecraft.

The remainder of the crew’s time in orbit was spent conducting approximately 40 scientific and research experiments, including some that sought to better understand space adaptation syndrome, a type of motion sickness specific to microgravity.

Gillis, a trained violinist, also brought his instrument to the mission and She performed a performance of “Rey’s Theme”. From “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Gillis’ music was beamed to Earth via SpaceX’s Starlink as a demonstration of the satellite network’s ability to provide communication in space.

Menon also had time to read a book she co-authored — titled “Kisses from Space” — to her family and a group of patients at St. Jude Children’s Hospital as part of a fundraiser.

Sunday’s scheduled return marks the conclusion of the third flight into space for the designated Crew Dragon capsule powering the Polaris Dawn mission.

The vehicle — which NASA astronauts named “Resilience” on their first flight into space in November 2020, called Crew-1 — flew into space Inspiration Mission 4 2021. On that trip, also funded by Isaacman, he and three colleagues orbited the Earth for three days as part of a fundraiser for childhood cancer research.