Billionaire first tourist spacewalker in dramatic return to Earth after breaking record

The first billionaire spacewalker has returned to Earth after a trip that saw him travel higher than anyone since Nasa's astronauts saying “mission complete”.

SpaceX's capsule splashed down off the coast of Florida shortly after 3.37am local time today carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two engineers and a former air force pilot.

Elon Musk’s rocket company live-streamed the event, which said on X: “Splashdown of Dragon confirmed. Welcome back to earth.”
It was soon followed by Isaacman, 41, who radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water: “We are mission complete.”

The crew conducted the first private spacewalk on Thursday while orbiting nearly 460 miles above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 875 miles following Tuesday's lift-off.

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Isaacman became the first person to perform a private spacewalk and the 264th person to perform the fete since the first by the former Soviet Union in 1965. In a live feed relayed back to Earth on Thursday, Isaacman could be heard saying: "Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world."

Staff at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, cheered and applauded as he left the capsule for his spacewalk.
The commercial spacewalk was the main focus of the five-day flight financed by Isaacman, a private air force provider, and Space X, which is owned by Musk.

After completing a series of manoeuvres, Isaacman returned to the Dragon spacecraft to make way for mission specialist Sarah Gillis to perform the same series of actions and close the hatch after returning to the cabin herself. The four members of the Polaris Dawn crew wore SpaceX's new spacewalking suits to protect themselves, and the mission's main aim was to test their safety.

The spacewalkers - who had around 15 minutes outside - climbed up through the hatch and, while still tethered to the spacecraft with their feet remaining inside, carried out a series of stretches to test the spacesuit. Mission pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon stayed in their seats and monitored vital support systems throughout the operation.
SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.

This was Isaacman's second chartered flight with SpaceX, and another two are planned under his personally financed space exploration programme, Polaris, named after the North Star.

He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a paediatric cancer survivor while raising millions for St Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Isaacman, the founder and chief executive of the Shift4 credit card-processing company, has not disclosed the amount he spent on the most recent mission.