The five-day Polaris Dawn mission concluded on September 15 and all four astronauts have returned safely to Earth. At 1:08 pm IST yesterday, SpaceX confirmed that the Dragon spacecraft made a successful splashdown off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean.

What followed was happy visuals of the astronauts greeting the recovery crew as they stepped out of the spacecraft.

“Welcome back to Earth!” posted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on X.

Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth, @rookisaacman, @kiddpoteet, @Gillis_SarahE, @annawmenon pic.twitter.com/nILpMQh2sR
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 15, 2024

The crew included Shift4 payments system founder and billionaire – Jared Isaacman, retired US Navy pilot – Scott Poteet, Senior Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX – Sarah Gillis and Lead Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX – Anna Menon.

They spent five days in space after the launch on September 10 and reached the highest Earth orbit since the Apollo missions.

ALSO SEE: SpaceX Shares First Views Of Earth As Polaris Dawn Reaches Highest Orbit In 50 Years

Astronaut photographs Dragon’s stunning return

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, from the International Space Station (ISS), captured the Dragon spacecraft on his camera as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere for a splashdown.

Polaris Dawn entry this morning.

I photographed it at 7:23 am GMT from the Cupola on ISS. In addition to the multi-colored entry trail over Florida, the basic cone shape of the Dragon capsule can be seen.

Nikon Z9, 200mm f2, 1/400th sec, ISO 25600. pic.twitter.com/VfKKiq0Hcn
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) September 15, 2024

“Polaris Dawn entry this morning. I photographed it at 7:23 am GMT from the Cupola on ISS. In addition to the multi-colored entry trail over Florida, the basic cone shape of the Dragon capsule can be seen,” Pettit captioned his post.

Pettit arrived at the station with Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin with Ivan Vagner on September 12. The trio launched to space from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Polaris Dawn concludes

The Polaris Dawn mission was the first of three in the Polaris Program. The entire program is being financed by Isaacman and intends to demonstrate new technologies, support development toward exploration of the Moon and Mars while supporting the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Dragon and the Polaris Dawn crew splash down off the coast of Florida, completing the @PolarisProgram‘s first human spaceflight mission pic.twitter.com/Sobt66zxnL
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 15, 2024

In Polaris Dawn, the astronauts conducted 36 science experiments to gauge changes in the human body in outer space and performed world’s first spacewalk on a private mission. The objective of the spacewalk was to test mobility of SpaceX’s new suits.

The second mission, timeline of which will be announced soon, will build upon the success of Polaris Dawn.

Interestingly, the third mission will be a crewed flight on the world’s biggest rocket – Starship, that SpaceX is building for its missions to the Moon and Mars.

ALSO SEE: SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn Astronauts Complete Historic First Private Spacewalk; Videos Released

(Image: X/@DonPettit/@SpaceX)

Robotic Martians can see blue Earth in Mars‘ sky.

The Curiosity rover, a car-sized NASA robot looking to find evidence of past habitability on the Red Planet, recently snapped an image of Mars’ misshapen moon, Phobos, and Earth next to each other.

“It’s the first time an image of the two celestial bodies have been captured together from the surface of Mars,” the space agency explained.

In the photo below, you can spot a ridge of Mars’ Mount Sharp at the bottom of the image. The upper right contains both Phobos — a moon 17 miles long — and Earth, which from some 200 million miles away appears as a bright speck of bluish light. (The second image is a blown-up view of the two objects.)

“From the rover’s perspective, the inset area would be about half the width of a thumb held at arm’s length,” NASA explained.

The moon Phobos and Earth seen in the upper right.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

A zoomed-in view of Phobos, on left, and Earth.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

The Curiosity rover captured this image on Sept. 9, 2024, during its 4,295th Martian day (called a “sol”) on Mars. It’s been rumbling over Martian terrain for over 12 years, and is currently ascending the 3.4-mile (5.5-kilometer) high Mount Sharp, a place that once experienced dramatic Martian floods.

Compared to our moon, which appears almost perfectly round, Phobos is misshapen. It’s not massive enough for its gravity to form a sphere. What’s more, Phobos has been hit time and time again by potent space rocks. “Phobos was nearly shattered by a giant impact, and has gouges from thousands of meteorite impacts,” NASA noted. The glaring impact site is Stickney crater, which is 5.6 miles (nine kilometers) wide.

As Curiosity continues its long slog up Mount Sharp, its robotic sibling, the Perseverance rover, is sleuthing the irradiated Martian surface for past evidence of microbial life. This means “chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago,” the agency said.

Still today, no evidence of life has been found on Mars — though NASA has spotted some compelling geologic leads. It’s clear, however, that the now-desert planet once teemed with lakes and rivers, back when it was a warmer, more hospitable, world.

Astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore joined NASA for a press conference on September 13 with updates about their stay in space. While addressing the world from the International Space Station (ISS), the duo acknowledged the situation they are in but said they are not disappointed.

🔴 LIVE: @NASA_Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams participate in a news conference from aboard the @Space_Station: https://t.co/R3ylT90887
— NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) September 13, 2024

Williams and Wilmore launched to the ISS on June 5 for an 8-day mission but the faults within their ride Starliner has forced them to stay longer. They were part of Boeing’s Crew Flight Test (CFT), the company’s debut mission with astronauts. Starliner returned empty on September 7 as it was too dangerous for the crew.

Meanwhile, the duo will continue living and working aboard the station and is now scheduled to return no earlier than February 2025.

ALSO SEE: Sunita Williams Is Exposed To Radiation Levels Equivalent To Getting Hundreds Of X-Rays; What Are The Risks?

‘This is my happy place’: Sunita Williams

Despite the disheartening scene of Starliner leaving without them, Williams wan’t discouraged and has described space as her “happy place.”

“This is my happy place. I love being up here in space,” she said at the press call.

Both astronauts stressed that they are not disappointed with their extended stay and that issues were expected since the CFT was a test flight. Wilmore also said that they had to make some decisions on a timeline as the unforeseen situation emerged.

“The timeline came to the point where we had to decide, is Starliner coming back with us or without us? And we just did not have enough time to get to the end of that runway where we could say that we were going to come back with it. I think we’d have gotten there, but we just ran out of time,” Wilmore said.

Since Starliner is no longer an option, NASA has planned to rescue the duo on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. It is launching two astronauts on the Crew-9 mission on September 25 who will return with Williams and Wilmore six months later.

“We’re excited to fly in two different spacecraft. I mean, we’re testers; that’s what we do,” said Williams about riding Dragon on her way back home.

ALSO SEE: NASA Reveals Astronauts For Crew-9 Mission To Rescue Sunita Williams

(Image: NASA)