The quartet of newly minted citizen astronauts comprising the Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) Inspiration4 mission safely splashed down in the Atlantic off Florida’s coast on Saturday, completing a three-day flight of the first all-civilian crew ever sent into Earth orbit.
The successful launch and return of the mission marked another milestone in the fledgling industry of commercial astro-tourism, 60 years after the dawn of human spaceflight.
“Welcome to the second space age,” Todd “Leif” Ericson, mission director for the Inspiration4 venture, told reporters on a conference call after the crew returned.
Photo: Space Exploration Technologies Corp via AP
SpaceX, the private rocketry company founded by Elon Musk, supplied the spacecraft, launched it, controlled its flight and handled the splashdown recovery operation.
The three-day mission ended as the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, parachuted into calm seas at about 11pm GMT, shortly before sunset, following an automated re-entry descent, as shown during a live SpaceX Web cast on its YouTube channel.
Within an hour, the four smiling crew members were seen emerging one by one from the capsule’s side hatch, after the vehicle, visibly scorched on its exterior, was hoisted from the ocean to the deck of a SpaceX recovery vessel.
Each of the four stood on the deck for a few moments in front of the capsule to wave and give the thumbs-up before being escorted to a medical station on board for checkups at sea.
Afterward they were flown by helicopter back to Cape Canaveral for reunions with loved ones.
The return from orbit followed a plunge through Earth’s atmosphere generating frictional heat that sent temperatures surrounding the outside of the capsule soaring to 1,900°C. The astronauts’ flight suits, fitted to special ventilation systems, were designed to keep them cool if the cabin heated up.
Applause was heard from the SpaceX flight control center in suburban Los Angeles as the first parachutes were seen deploying, slowing the capsule’s descent to about 25kph before splashdown, with another round of cheers as the craft hit the water.
The astronauts were cheered again as they stepped onto the deck of the recovery ship.
First out was Hayely Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant at St Jude Children’s Research Center in Tennessee, a childhood bone cancer survivor herself who became the youngest person ever to reach Earth orbit on the Inspiration4 mission.
She was followed in rapid succession by geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate Sian Proctor, 51, aerospace data engineer and air force veteran Chris Sembroski, 42, and the crew’s billionaire benefactor and “mission commander” Jared Isaacman, 38.
“That was a heck of a ride for us,” Isaacman, chief executive officer of the e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments Inc, radioed from inside the capsule moments after splashdown. “We’re just getting started.”
The Inspiration4 team blasted off on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
Within three hours the crew capsule had reached a cruising orbital altitude of 585km, the farthest any human has flown from Earth since NASA’s Apollo moon program ended in 1972.
Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight programs at SpaceX, marveled at how little went wrong during the flight, citing just two problems he described as minor and easily resolved: a malfunctioning fan in the crew’s toilet system and a faulty temperature sensor on one of the spacecraft’s engines.
The level of “space adaption syndrome” experienced by the crew — vertigo and motion sickness while acclimating to a microgravity environment — was “pretty much on target with what NASA astronauts do,” Ericson said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS