SpaceX’s Polaris Dawncrew has returned to Earth after five days in orbit, following a historic mission featuring the world’s first commercial spacewalk.
The Dragon capsule made splashdown off the coast of Florida shortly after 03:37 local time (07:37 GMT), in an event stream lived by SpaceX.
“Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth,” SpaceX posted.
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, former United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott Poteet, and commander and fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman.
“Happy, healthy, home,” the Polaris Program wrote on X. “A new era of commercial spaceflight dawns, with much more to come.”
The four-member team led by Isaacman was launched on 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.
Isaacman was replaced by Gillis, 30, who went through similar motions, turning side to side and flexing her limbs to see how a new spacesuit, designed to protect the crew from the harsh vacuum, would hold up.
The Polaris Dawn mission made history as it reached a higher altitude than any human has traveled in five decades. A spacewalk conducted early Thursday morning also marked the first time such an endeavor has been completed by a privately funded and operated mission.
But returning to Earth is among the most dangerous stretches of any space mission.
To safely reach home, the Crew Dragon capsule carried out what’s called a “de-orbit burn,” orienting itself as it prepared to slice through the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere.
The spacecraft then reached extremely hot temperatures — up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius) — because of the pressure and friction caused by hitting the air while still traveling around 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour). The crew, however, should have remained at comfortable temperatures, protected by the Crew Dragon’s heat shield, which is located on the bottom of the 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) capsule.
