Tech billionaire returns to Earth after first private spacewalk

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers. SpaceX’s capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot. Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis the 265th. This image made from SpaceX video shows the four-member crew including tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, third left, seated in its capsule as they wait to get off the capsule after it landed in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas early Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star.