by A SpaceX capsule carrying four private citizens splashed down off the coast of Florida before dawn at 3:36 a.m. ET Sunday morning, ending a historic mission that included the world’s first all-civilian spacewalk.
Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon returned to Earth in a Crew Dragon capsule and splashed down off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Polaris Dawn, our mission is complete,” the operators announced over the crackle of a radio as recovery ships made their way toward the capsule drifting in the night sea.
The five-day Polaris Dawn flight was the fifth private mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and the company’s most ambitious expedition, as the crew members and their spacecraft performed several risky maneuvers.
Of particular note is the all-civilian spacewalk that took place on Thursday. Isaacman and Gillis exited the Dragon capsule on a tether and spent about 10 minutes each in the vacuum of space. The duo spent the spacewalk conducting mobility tests in their newly developed spacesuits.
The trip was a risky undertaking because the Dragon capsule does not have a pressurized lock. This meant that all four members of the Polaris Dawn mission wore spacesuits during the spacewalk and the entire capsule was depressurized to vacuum conditions.
The completion of the spacewalk marked an important milestone in the history of human spaceflight. Previously, only astronauts from government space agencies had undertaken spacewalks to build or improve orbiting space stations, repair satellites and conduct scientific experiments.
At the start of the mission, the Polaris Dawn crew reached an orbital altitude of 870 miles above the Earth’s surface, the highest humans have reached since the last Apollo moon mission in 1972.
At that point, the capsule was far enough away to pass through part of the Van Allen radiation belt, a zone of high-energy radiation particles trapped by Earth’s magnetosphere. The trip will allow scientists to study the effects of space radiation on crew members and their spacecraft. SpaceX has said the findings could help plan missions to the moon and eventually Mars, which would require astronauts to fly through the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts.
Isaacman is the founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4. He was part of SpaceX’s first all-civilian mission to orbit in 2021 and funded the Polaris Dawn mission, his second spaceflight, with an undisclosed sum.
The Polaris Dawn flight was designed to test new technologies and procedures for future long-duration missions. It is the first of three planned space flights in the Polaris program, which Isaacman launched together with SpaceX. He did not comment on the cost of the program or the possible launch date of the other missions.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com.
