This will be the third time that Elon Musk’s company has taken humans to space and back
Washington:
Four private space tourists aboard a SpaceX capsule are scheduled to return to Earth on Saturday night, touching down off the coast of Florida after three days of orbiting the planet.
Splash-down at 7:06 p.m. local time (2306 GMT) in the Atlantic Ocean not far from Cape Canaveral, where four Americans blasted into space on Wednesday.
The event will be broadcast live by SpaceX, starting about an hour before the scheduled landing time.
Dragon’s heat shield will allow the capsule to withstand descent, which will be slowed by four giant parachutes when the vessel is low enough in Earth’s atmosphere.
After that, a SpaceX boat will arrive to retrieve it, and the passengers disembark.
The Dragon capsule traveled farther than the International Space Station (ISS) in an orbit at an altitude of about 575 kilometers (357 mi). Its altitude was reduced to 365 kms on Friday evening.
This will be the third time that Elon Musk’s company has taken humans back to space, one in August 2020 and one in May this year, after the return of two NASA missions. Both were bringing back the astronauts from their stay in the ISS.
Unlike NASA astronauts, members of the Inspiration 4 mission did not go to the ISS but remained in orbit around Earth.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman financed the trip, paying SpaceX tens of millions of dollars. Isaacman, who led the mission, offered the other three seats to strangers: Hayley Arsinaux, a 29-year-old nurse; Professor Sean Proctor, 51; and Chris Sambrowski, 42, a US Air Force veteran.
During the flight, the vital signs of the crew members were monitored to study the effects of the space environment on the nautical.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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