Four space tourists return to Earth after a personal flight via pole

Four space tourists who orbited the Arctic and Antarctic returned to Earth on Friday and jumped down into the Pacific Ocean to end their privately funded polar tour.

Bitcoin investor Chun Wang chartered SpaceX flights for himself and three others in a dragon capsule equipped with a polar cap and a dome-shaped window that offers a 360-degree view of everything in between. The king refused to say how much he paid for the trip 3 1/2 days.

The quartet, shaking from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday night, has returned from the Southern California coast. This was the first human space flight, the first Pacific splashdown, circled the Earth above the poles of the space crew for the first time in 50 years.

The Chinese-born King, now a citizen of Malta, invited Norwegian filmmaker Janik Mikkelsen, German robot researcher Laveer Lodge, and Australia’s polar guide Eric Phillips.

“It’s so grand because it’s a different kind of desert, so it just lasts forever,” the Lodge said in a video posted to X, staring from the track.

Mikkelsen packed camera equipment into the capsule and spent much of his time behind the lens.

According to the king, all four of them suffered from space motion sickness after reaching orbit. But by the time they woke up on the second day they felt energized and cranked with open window coverings just above Antarctica, he went via X.

In addition to recording a pole of 270 miles (430 km) as part of the test, Wang and his crew collected the first medical x-rays in space and carried out 20 other scientific experiments. They named Travel FRAM2 after the Norwegian sailing ship that carried explorers to poles over a century ago. A little of the original ship’s wooden deck accompanied the crew into space.

Their medical test continued with Splashdown. All four of them themselves left the capsule and raised the bags of equipment, allowing researchers to see how a stable space crew stood up. They pumped their fists in joy.

SpaceX said the decision to switch the splashdown site from Florida from this flight is based on safety. The company said the Pacific splashdown ensures that surviving fragments of the trunk left near the end of the flight – will be immersed in the ocean.

The last people returning from space to the Pacific were three NASA astronauts assigned to the 1975 Apollo Soyuz mission.

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