09/15/2024 – 12:54
SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission landed on the coast of Florida, United States, this Sunday (15), after its crew made history with the first spacewalk carried out by civilians.
The Dragon capsule landed in the ocean at 3:37 a.m. local time (0437 GMT), according to footage broadcast live by SpaceX. A team was immediately dispatched to recover the spacecraft and the four crew members.
The capsule was removed from the water and transported to a nearby vessel.
After a brief medical checkup, SpaceX engineer Anna Menon was the first to emerge from the spacecraft, smiling and waving. She was followed by fellow engineer Sarah Gillis, pilot Scott Poteet and billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman, the mission commander.
The main objectives of the mission, which represents a new stage in the commercial exploration of space, were achieved.
The spacecraft blasted off Tuesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and ventured farther into space than any other crew since the Apollo missions more than half a century ago.
The mission reached an altitude of 1,400 km, more than three times the orbital distance of the International Space Station (ISS).
Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon became the two women who traveled the furthest from Earth.
The mission’s pivotal moment came on Thursday. Aboard the Dragon capsule, the orbit was lowered to about 700 km for the spacewalk, in which Isaacman opened the hatch and stepped out into space attached to a structure called the “Skywalker”, with a view of Earth in the background.
He returned to the capsule and was replaced outside by Gillis, who, like Isaacman, performed a series of mobility tests on the company’s next-generation spacesuits.
Both remained for about ten minutes outside the Dragon spacecraft, which was then re-pressurized.
“SpaceX, we’re coming home. We have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman, 41, said as stunning images of the blue planet were broadcast live.
– “A giant step” –
The crew performed about 50 scientific experiments to better understand the impact of long-duration space missions on human health.
Crew members also tested transmissions from SpaceX’s Starlink network, sending a high-resolution video to control on the surface.
NASA chief Bill Nelson on Thursday celebrated the “giant step” taken by SpaceX.
The four crew members spent more than two years in intensive training, which included hundreds of hours in simulators, as well as skydiving, scuba diving and practicing on top of a volcano in Ecuador.
It’s Isaacman’s second time flying aboard a SpaceX orbital mission, following a less ambitious attempt in 2021.
This milestone is the latest in a series of achievements for SpaceX, a company founded by billionaire Elon Musk in 2002 that has become a powerhouse that has reshaped the space industry.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions in the Polaris program, a collaboration between Isaacman and SpaceX.
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