First all-civilian orbital mission returns to Earth: SpaceX

First all-civilian orbital mission returns to Earth: SpaceX

Four space tourists ended their trailblazing trip to orbit on Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast. Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier. The all-amateur crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut. The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists. SpaceX’s fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 585 kilometres after Wednesday night’s liftoff. Surpassing the International Space Station by 160 kilometres, the passengers savoured views of Earth through a big bubble-shaped window added to the top of the capsule. The four streaked back through the atmosphere early Saturday evening, the first space travellers to end their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969. SpaceX’s two previous crew splashdowns — carrying astronauts for NASA — were in the Gulf of Mexico. This time, NASA was little more than an encouraging bystander, its only tie being the Kennedy Space Center launch