Super splashdown

4:36 am Sunday (IST) Touchdown at Florida

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Tweets

“Happy. Healthy. Home. Welcome back to Earth.– ” Inspiration4

“Splashdown! Welcome back to planet Earth,” — SpaceX

Highest orbit since Apollo

Within three hours of takeoff, the crew capsule had reached a cruising orbital altitude of 585 km, which is higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope

It is the farthest any human has flown from Earth since NASA’s Apollo moon programme ended in 1972

Headline: First all-civilian orbital crew returns safely

*Four space tourists safely ended their trailblazing trip to orbit on Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast

*Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier

*The Inspiration4 team blasted off on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral atop one of SpaceX’s two-stage reusable Falcon 9 rockets

*The all-amateur crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut