FLORIDA — The four civilian crewmembers of the Polaris Dawn mission had a successful splashdown during the pre-dawn hours of Sunday after spending five days orbiting Earth and conducting the first commercial spacewalk, among other firsts.

Polaris Dawn’s Cmdr. Jared Isaacman, pilot Kidd Poteet and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon and mission specialist Sarah Gillis communicated that they were safe after SpaceX’s Dragon capsule named Resilience slowly touched down off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, at around 3:36 a.m. ET, confirmed SpaceX.  

Using a boat, the capsule was towed to a recovery ship and brought on board. The crew had help getting out of the capsule as they get reacquainted with gravity. A medical team will check them out as they and the Resilience will be heading back to land. The four will take a helicopter to return to land while the capsule will be taken back with the recovery ship.

The Dragon used a series of parachute deployments to slow it down from an estimated orbital speed of about 17,500 mph (2,816 kph) to 350 mph (482 kph) then to about 15 mph (25 kph) when it softly landed in the ocean.

And going at those speeds before the splashdown meant that people below the Dragon's flight path may have heard a sonic boom.

Learn all about sonic booms here.

It also meant the outside of the Dragon was a bit toasty at a mere 3,000 degrees F (1,649 degrees C).

The Polaris Program’s Polaris Dawn was a joint operation with SpaceX and it is the first of three missions.

Mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon, left, pilot Kidd Poteet, Cmdr. Jared Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis sit in SpaceX's Dragon capsule named Resilience. They took part in the five-day Polaris Dawn mission. (SpaceX)

About the mission

Polaris Program is organized by Isaacman, who is a philanthropist and CEO of Shift4. And this is not the first time for him to be in space as he launched the Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the first all-citizen spaceflight where he was a commander of.

In fact, three years ago to the day, both the Polaris Dawn mission splashdown and the Inspiration4 mission launched.

The Polaris Dawn mission, like Inspiration4, will raise funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

The Polaris Dawn is a five-day mission that started on Tuesday, Sept. 10, with the quartet taking off in a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center.

Each day, the mission saw something new. On Wednesday, the Dragon orbited the Earth at a height of 870 miles (1,400 km), breaking the 1966 record of the Gemini 11 mission that saw it at an altitude of 853 miles (1,373 kilometers) above Earth. It was the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 that humans have been that far from Earth.

Polaris Dawn orbited our little round planet six times during that height. 

This also meant that Menon and Gillis are the first women in history to reach a high-altitude orbit. They are SpaceX lead space operations engineers.

One of the experiments being done is testing Starlink’s connections as such great distances. SpaceX owns the Starlink company, which sends up communications satellites.

“So, Starlink is a game changer, and that's what SpaceX is hoping; provides internet services anywhere in the world based on the satellite mesh constellation that they've created,” Poteet told Spectrum News in a feature article.

All four have used Starlink to speak with their family members back on Earth.

Poteet also shared that a number of medical experiments are being conducted on the crew, like monitoring the changes to eyesight and the impact microgravity has on blood flow.

On Thursday, Isaacman was the first person in history to conduct the first-ever commercial spacewalk, who was followed by Gillis. All other spacewalks have been done by national space agencies like NASA.

It was also the first time the inside of a Dragon capsule has been exposed to space and it was a test of SpaceX’s spacesuits or extravehicular activity (EVA). While the pair were halfway outside of the capsule, they tested their suits’ mobility.

The mission also saw a few other interesting things that touched on the humanity and arts that can still take part in space. Such as Menon reading her book “Kisses from Space” to patients of St. Jude and her own family.

Or how Gillis performed on her violin. This musical treat was a partnership between the Polaris Program, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and El Sistema USA.

Follow Polaris Dawn's Journey