Space tourists splash down
FOUR space tourists ended their trailblazing trip to orbit on Saturday with a splashdown 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 all-amateur crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut.
The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists.
SpaceX’s fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 363 miles after Wednesday night’s lift-off. Surpassing the International Space Station by 100 miles, the passengers savoured views of Earth through a large bubble-shaped window.