Monday, September 20, 2021
On Saturday, four enthusiasts of space tourism ended their trailblazing trip safely to orbit with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.
Just before the sunset, the SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean, not far-flung from the chartered flight from where they started three days earlier.
In the world, this all-amateur crew was the first to circle the Mother earth without a professional astronaut.
In this trip, a billionaire who paid undisclosed millions and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and Elon Musk, the founder of this Aerospace company, took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists.
“Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.
“It was a heck of a ride for us … just getting started,” replied trip sponsor Jared Isaacman, referring to the growing number of private flights on the horizon.
Fully automated Dragon capsule of SpaceX reached an unusually high altitude of 363 miles (585 kilometers) after Wednesday night’s liftoff. Surpassing the International Space Station by 100 miles (160 kilometers), the passengers could view the Earth through a big bubble-shaped window that was added to the top of the capsule.
Early Saturday evening, the four tourists streaked back through the atmosphere, the first space travelers 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.
Tags: spacex
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