All-civilian SpaceX astronauts land back on Earth safely after 3 days in space

The all-civilian crew, made up of a e-commerce executive, a geoscientist, a physician assistant and a data engineer, has landed back on earth. The spaceship has been orbiting the Earth since Wednesday and has now safely made it home

An all-civilian crew have made it safely back to Earth after an historic three-day journey into space.

The astronauts, who travelled onboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket ship, splashed down in the waters off Florida at around 1am UK time on Sunday safe and sound.

“Welcome to the second space age,” Todd “Leif” Ericson, mission director for the Inspiration4 venture, told reporters after the crew returned.

The flight launched on Wednesday and included an e-commerce executive who reportedly paid £200 million for a space.

The crew orbited the Earth at an altitude of 363 miles, which is higher than the International Space Station and the highest altitude travelled by humans in years.

Within an hour the four smiling crew members were seen emerging one by one from the capsule’s side hatch after the vehicle, visibly scorched on its exterior, was hoisted from the ocean to the deck of a SpaceX recovery vessel.

Each of the four stood on the deck for a few moments in front of the capsule to wave and give thumbs-up before being escorted to a medical station on board for checkups at sea.

Afterward they were flown by helicopter back to Cape Canaveral for reunions with loved ones.

The return from orbit followed a plunge through Earth’s atmosphere generating frictional heat that sent temperatures surrounding the outside of the capsule soaring to 1,900 degrees Celsius.

The astronauts’ flight suits, fitted to special ventilation systems, were designed to keep them cool if the cabin heated up.

Applause was heard from the SpaceX flight control centre in suburban Los Angeles as the first parachutes were seen deploying, slowing the capsule’s descent to about 15 miles per hour before splashdown, with another round of cheers as the craft hit the water.

First out was Hayely Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Center in Tennessee, a childhood bone cancer survivor herself who became the youngest person ever reach Earth orbit on the Inspiration4 mission.

She was followed in rapid succession by geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate Sian Proctor, 51, aerospace data engineer and Air Force veteran Chris Sembroski, 42, and finally the crew’s billionaire benefactor and “mission commander” Jared Isaacman, 38.

“That was a heck of a ride for us,” Isaacman, chief executive of the e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments Inc, radioed from inside the capsule moments after splashdown. “We’re just getting started.”

Mr Isaacman came up with the idea of the mission to raise awareness and support for one of his favourite causes, a leading paediatric cancer centre in Tennessee.

During the three day trip shared a glimpse of their views of the Earth through the ship’s observation dome.

The team spent five months preparing for the flight and had to go through altitude fitness, centrifuge (G-force), microgravity and simulator training, emergency drills, classroom work and medical examinations.

It is the first all-civilian crew ever to circle Earth from space.

On Wednesday, their space capsule flew into the skies perched on top of one of the company’s reusable two-stage Falcon 9 rockets and fitted with the observation dome in place of its usual hatch.

It reached orbit almost 10 minutes after its launch.

The rocket’s first-stage booster then separated from the spacecraft’s top half, descended back to Earth and touched down safely on a landing platform floating in the Atlantic ocean on a drone ship named Just Read the Instructions.