After setting an altitude record and staging the first non-government spacewalk, billionaire Jared Isaacman and his three.
After setting an altitude record and staging the first non-government spacewalk, billionaire Jared Isaacman and his three crewmates returned to Earth early Sunday, plunging back into the atmosphere aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft for an on-target splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
With Isaacman and pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet monitoring cockpit displays, flanked by SpaceX medical officer Anna Menon and crew trainer Sarah Gillis, the spacecraft slammed back into the discernible atmosphere and decelerated in a fireball of atmospheric friction, protected by a SpaceX-designed heat shield.
A few minutes later, the spacecraft’s parachutes unfurled and the Crew Dragon settled to a gentle 15-mph splashdown at 3:36 a.m. EDT near Dry Tortugas, about 70 miles from Key West, Florida.
Spectacular, if ghostly, infrared images of the spacecraft during re-entry were captured by a NASA photo-reconnaissance jet and then by an IR camera on a SpaceX recovery ship. Even the crew of the International Space Station got a chance to witness the spacecraft’s fiery re-entry.
“We actually had a pretty neat view of Polaris Dawn entering,” astronaut Mike Barratt radioed flight controllers in Houston. “All of us were more or less crowded in the (multi-window) cupola watching it. That was pretty spectacular for us.”
The SpaceX recovery ship was on the scene within about a half hour to haul the capsule on deck, where support personnel were standing by to help the crew members out of the spacecraft.
