The civilian crew on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission returned to Earth on Sunday after a historic five days in orbit that took them higher than anyone since Nasa’s moon trips more than half a century ago. The Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas shortly after 3.37am local time (8.37am BST), carrying onboard the billionaire tech entrepreneur and mission funder Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former air force Thunderbird pilot. Moments after the landing in the predawn darkness, Elon Musk’s space firm celebrated on his social media platform, X, saying: “Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth.” The all-civilian crew performed the first private spacewalk while soaring nearly 460 miles (740km) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and the Hubble space telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 875 miles after Tuesday’s lift-off. Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union achieved the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis became the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks had been done by professional astronauts. “We are mission complete,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team. Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester, called the mission “a landmark” in commercial space exploration and a signal that conducting activities in space was no longer the preserve of government-backed agencies. The Dragon capsule’s hatch was open for barely half an hour during Thursday’s commercial spacewalk. Isaacman emerged up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX’s new spacesuit, followed by Gillis, who was knee-high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, performed Rey’s Theme from the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens in orbit earlier in the week. Operations around the spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurise the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Because there is no airlock on the Dragon capsule, SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits throughout. SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for longer missions to Mars in the future. This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more ahead under his personally financed space exploration programme called Polaris, after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a paediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250m for St Jude children’s research hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Barstow said: “This is a real milestone in space exploration, with a commercial company demonstrating its ability to conduct human space operations beyond low Earth orbit and completely independently of a government space agency. “It is a landmark in the development of commercial space capability. It also signals that conducting activities in space is no longer just the province of the cohort of highly trained astronauts and is becoming accessible to others who can deliver services in space without going through the traditional astronaut route.” For the just completed Polaris Dawn mission, Isaacman, the founder and chief executive of the Shift4 credit card processing company, shared the cost with SpaceX. He has not divulged how much he spent.