First Commercial Space Tourists Successfully Returned To Earth

The private space mission Polaris Dawn has been successfully completed: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft landed in the sea on Sunday morning, Bild reports. According to the company, this happened near the southern tip of Florida.

“The Polaris Dawn mission is complete. Thank you for all your help in making this mission happen,” said Captain Jared Isaacman after landing. He was joined by pilot Scott Poteet, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. As for the spacewalk, Isaacman and Gillis were outside the Crew Dragon. They spent about eight minutes in space, in constant contact with the ship.

It should be noted that the stage of entry of the Crew Dragon ship into the Earth’s atmosphere was observed by members of the crew of the International Space Station. “We had a pretty good view of Polaris Dawn entering the atmosphere. We were all crowded in the dome watching it. It was pretty impressive for us,” said NASA astronaut Mike Barratt, who is part of the orbital station crew.

SpaceX emphasizes that this is the greatest distance to Earth since the last flights of the Apollo space program to the Moon in the early 1970s.