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The billionaire spacewalker touched down on Earth after five days in orbit higher than any human since NASA reached the moon.
The SpaceX capsule parachuted and parachuted shortly after 03:37 off the coast of Florida, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force pilot.
“Mission accomplished,” Isaacman radioed as he floated in the Gulf of Mexico.
The event was live streamed by SpaceX, which posted on X: “Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth.”
The crew took their first private spacewalk Thursday, orbiting nearly 460 miles above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Their spacecraft reached a maximum altitude of 875 miles after Tuesday’s launch.
Mr Isaacman became the 264th person to walk into space since the first in the former Soviet Union in 1965, with SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis making the 265th during the last trip. Until now, all ascents into space were made by professional astronauts.
In a live broadcast sent to Earth on Thursday, Mr Isaacman was heard saying: “We’ve all got a lot of work to do back home. But Earth sure looks like a perfect world from here.”
Employees at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., cheered and applauded as Mr. Isaacman left the capsule and headed for space.
Commercial spaceflight was the main goal of the five-day flight funded by Mr Isaacman and Space X, owned by fellow billionaire Elon Musk.
After completing the series of maneuvers, Mr. Isaacman returned to the Dragon spacecraft to make way for Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis to perform the same series of actions and close the hatch upon returning to the cabin.
The four members of the Polaris Dawn crew wore SpaceX’s new spacesuits to protect themselves, and the main objective of the mission was to test the suits.
The spacewalkers — who had about 15 minutes outside — climbed through the hatch and, while still strapped to the spacecraft with their legs remaining inside, performed a series of stretches to test the suit.
Mission pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and mission specialist and physician Anna Menon remained in place and monitored vital support systems during the operation.
SpaceX sees the short exercise as a starting point for testing spacesuit technology for future longer missions to Mars.
It was Mr. Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more planned as part of his personally funded space exploration program called Polaris after the North Star.
He paid an undisclosed sum for his first space flight in 2021, taking competition winners and a pediatric cancer survivor with him, while raising millions for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Mr. Isaacman, founder and chief executive of credit card processing company Shift4, did not disclose how much he spent on the latest mission.
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