(CNN) – SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew has completed a five-day mission in orbit, including the world's first commercial spaceflight, with a landing in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Crew Dragon capsule with four astronauts landed on Florida's Dry Tortugas beach at 3:37 a.m. this Sunday.
The The Polaris Dawn mission made history By reaching the highest height ever achieved by a human being in five decades. Thursday's early morning spacewalk is the first time a privately funded and manned mission has completed such an attempt.
But the return to Earth is one of the most dangerous legs of any space mission.
To get home safely, the Crew Dragon capsule performed a so-called “orbit burn” as it prepared to pass through the densest part of Earth's atmosphere.
The ship reached extremely high temperatures due to the pressure and friction caused by the wind while traveling continuously at about 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour), up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius). However, the crew had to stay at a comfortable temperature protected by the Crew Dragon's heat shield located at the bottom of the 4-meter (13-ft) wide capsule.
Aerial traction began to slow the vehicle before the Crew Dragon deployed parachutes, which further slowed its descent.
After falling into the sea, the ship drifted in the water for a while until rescue teams waiting nearby pulled it out of the sea and boarded a special boat called the “Dragon's Nest”. There, final safety checks were carried out before the crew disembarked from the capsule and began their journey back to Earth.
A group of Polaris Dawn It was made up of Mission Commander, Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of the financial firm Shift4Payments; his close friend and former US Air Force pilot Scott “Kid” Poteet; and SpaceX operations engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
The four completed the mission, breaking an altitude record, reaching an orbit around Earth and expanding. Up to 870 miles (1,400 kilometers). Reaching 853 miles (1,373 kilometers), it is the highest Earth orbit ever achieved by humans, surpassing the record set by NASA's Gemini 11 mission in 1966.
In this high-risk operation, also known as an extravehicular activity or EVA, the crew lowered the Dragon capsule completely before opening the Isaacman hatch, exposing the crew to the vacuum of space.
Isaacman and Gillis left the vehicle for approximately 10 minutes, before the crew returned to the Dragon spacecraft and closed the hatch, conducting a series of tests to understand the operation of the EVA suits.
Apparently, the spacewalk went without any major problems. Isaacman declared after his first glimpse of the spacecraft's exterior: “All of us back home have a lot of work to do, but from here – it looks like a perfect world.”
The rest of the crew's time in orbit was spent conducting nearly 40 science and research experiments, some of which sought to better understand space adaptation syndrome, a type of motion sickness specific to microgravity.
A trained violinist, Gillis also brought her instrument to work “Ray's Theme” presented the show From “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Gilles' music was sent to Earth via SpaceX's Starlink as a testament to the power of satellite networks to provide connectivity in space.
Menon had time to read a book he co-authored — titled “Kisses from Space” — to his family and a group of patients at St. Jude Children's Hospital as part of the fundraiser.
Sunday's scheduled return marks the end of the third mission into space for the particular Crew Dragon capsule that powers the Polaris Dawn mission.
The craft, named “Resilience,” was flown into space by NASA astronauts known as Crew-1 in November 2020. Inspiration 4 Mission of 2021. On that trip, funded by Isaacman, he and three crew members circled Earth for three days as part of a fundraiser for childhood cancer research.
