Amateur astronauts return from space

WASHINGTON－Three rich businessmen and a former NASA astronaut splashed down on Monday off the Florida coast after spending over two weeks aboard the International Space Station, in a landmark mission for the commercial sector.

After a dizzying descent, a SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom-1 gently floated down to the Atlantic Ocean near Jacksonville at 1:06 pm on four huge parachutes.

The spaceship was affectionately referred to as a "toasted marshmallow" because of the scorch marks on its heat shield from reentering the atmosphere at 28,000 kilometers per hour.

The crew was quickly retrieved by a waiting ship, marking the official end of the first fully private mission to the orbiting outpost－and a turning point in the United States' space agency NASA's goal to commercialize the region of space called low Earth orbit, or LEO.

"We proved that we can prepare the crew in a way that makes them effective and productive on orbit, and we're ready to go do it again," Derek Hassmann, operations director at Axiom Space, told reporters in a news call.

Axiom Space paid SpaceX for transport services and NASA for use of the ISS, while charging the three tycoons a reported $55 million each for the privilege.

"Welcome home, Axiom-1!" tweeted NASA chief Bill Nelson."#Ax1 and all of the progress we've seen in the commercial space sector wouldn't be possible without NASA's collaboration with private industry."

NASA is increasingly looking to the private industry to handle operations in LEO, leaving it free to focus on exploration missions to the Moon and eventually to Mars.

US real estate mogul Larry Connor, Canadian financier Mark Pathy, Israeli impact investor Eytan Stibbe and veteran astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria had blasted off on April 8. They were originally scheduled to spend only eight days on the space station, but bad weather forced repeated delays.

In total, the crew spent 17 days in orbit, 15 of those on the ISS.

But Hassmann said Axiom and its crew did not incur additional costs because of the delay.

Axiom had been keen to stress that its mission should not be considered tourism, unlike the recent, attention-grabbing suborbital flights carried out by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

On board the ISS, which orbits 400 km above sea level, the quartet carried out research projects, including an MIT technology demonstration of smart tiles that form a robotic swarm and self-assemble into space architecture.

Agencies Via Xinhua