The all-civililian crew of SpaceXs Inspiration4 spent three days at 360 miles above ground. They have now returned to Earth. The Crew Dragon capsule descended at 15 miles an hour under four parachutes. It splashed down at 7 :07 pm Eastern off Florida's Atlantic coast, just a few miles from the launch site on Wednesday night.
Welcome to Earth. Your mission has shown the planet that space is available for everyone and that ordinary people can make extraordinary contributions to the world around us, said Andy Tran, SpaceX quality engineer, who was also one of the hosts of SpaceX's livestream from Hawthorne in California.
SpaceX, thank you so much, it was an amazing ride for us, said commander Jared Isaacman. Were just getting started!"
Just copy, returned Tran
Their landing spot was dependent on the weather conditions. The ocean conditions cooperated with their plans. There were no storms in the sky and there wasn't much water. SpaceX coordinated with the Coast Guard to ensure safety and discourage boaters from entering splashdown zone. This was the same as last year, when two American astronauts landed in a SpaceX capsule in Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX personnel quickly approached Inspiration4 aboard small boats to extract astronauts from the capsule and transport them to dry ground. It is expected that the recovery process will take around an hour. The crew will then undergo medical evaluations and head to a private party before finally returning home.
This is the start of private space tourism, beyond what we saw this summer in suborbital. It took only five minutes. After that, it was over. Jordan Bimm, a University of Chicago space historian, stated that this is much more than what people understand as space tourism.
The Dragons manifest features Isaacman, the billionaire CEO and paying customer of Shift4Payments and three tickets that he sponsored: Sian, a geoscientist, artist, and Chris Sembroski an aeronautical engineer. Hayley Arceneaux is a physician assistant. Proctor is the fourth African American woman to travel to space. Arceneaux became the first person to fly to space with a prosthetic body. Proctor is a survivor of bone cancer and was once a patient at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The Inspiration4 team hopes to raise at least $200 Million, which they are close to achieving.
Although Dragon can fly independently, Proctor and Isaacman have the training to be able to pilot the capsule. While orbiting Earth 15 times per day, the crew was busy: Isaacman maintained track of spacecraft systems and kept in touch to mission control. Arceneaux did medical research about the effects of space radiation on health and extremely low gravity on vision. The crew collected biological samples from their fellow passengers and shared biomedical data with Cornell University and Baylor College researchers. They also monitored their heart rates, blood oxygen saturation and sleep. Arceneaux also took images of her crewmates' eyes and other organs with a handheld ultrasound scanner called Butterfly IQ+. This artificial intelligence-enabled device is currently being tested at the International Space Station.
Proctor brought along ink, markers and watercolor paint. However, she was not sure how they would perform in a near zero-gravity environment. Proctor focused on her metallic markers for the second day of their flight. Proctor showed me her drawing of the Dragon capsule carried by a dragon from the Earth. This was during an on-orbit update.
