From the Liveblog of
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Private spacewalker splashes down off Florida after historic SpaceX flight
Jewish billionaire Jared Isaacman has returned to Earth with his crew, after a five-day trip that saw the first-ever private spacewalk and lifted the group higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers.
SpaceX’s capsule splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
“We are mission complete,” Isaacman radios as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team.
They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 460 miles (740 kilometers) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 875 miles (1,408 kilometers) following Tuesday’s liftoff.
Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth, @rookisaacman, @kiddpoteet, @Gillis_SarahE, @annawmenon pic.twitter.com/nILpMQh2sR
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 15, 2024
Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis then became the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by professional astronauts.
This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a pediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
