Civilian astronauts complete space mission

MIAMI • The four newly minted citizen astronauts comprising the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission have safely splashed down in the Atlantic off Florida's coast, completing a three-day flight of the first all-civilian crew ever sent into Earth's orbit.

The successful launch and return of the mission, the latest in a recent string of rocket-powered expeditions bankrolled by their billionaire passengers, marked another milestone in the fledgling commercial astro-tourism industry, 60 years after the dawn of human spaceflight.

"Welcome to the second space age," Mr Todd "Leif" Ericson, mission director for the Inspiration4 venture, told reporters on a conference call after the crew returned.

SpaceX, the private company founded by electric carmaker Tesla CEO 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 around 7pm, shortly before sunset, following an automated re-entry descent, as shown during a live SpaceX webcast 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.

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 deg C.

The astronauts' flight suits, fitted to special ventilation systems, were designed to keep them cool should the cabin be heated up.

Applause was heard from the SpaceX flight control centre in suburban Los Angeles as the first parachutes were seen deploying, slowing the capsule's descent to about 25kmh 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 Dr Hayely Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant at St Jude Children's Research Centre in Tennessee. She is a childhood bone cancer survivor herself and is now the youngest person ever to reach Earth's 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, finally, the crew's billionaire benefactor and "mission commander" Jared Isaacman, 38.

"That was a heck of a ride for us," Mr Isaacman, chief executive of the e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, radioed from inside the capsule moments after splashdown. "We're just getting started."

He had paid an undisclosed sum - pegged by Time magazine at roughly US$200 million (S$269 million) - to fellow billionaire Elon Musk for all four seats aboard the Crew Dragon.

The Inspiration4 team blasted off last Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop one of SpaceX's two-stage reusable Falcon 9 rockets.

Within three hours, the crew capsule had reached a cruising orbital altitude of 585 km, higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope, and the farthest any human has flown from Earth since Nasa's Apollo Moon programme ended in 1972.

It also marked the debut flight of Mr Musk's new space tourism business and a leap ahead of competitors likewise offering rides on rocket ships to well-heeled customers willing to pay a small fortune to experience the exhilaration of spaceflight and earn amateur astronaut wings.

REUTERS