NASA Astronaut Captures Photo of SpaceX’s Private Polaris Dawn Capsule Reentry from the ISS

NASA astronaut Don Pettit saw the mission’s conclusion from the ISS.

During the night another fantastic picture of Polaris Dawn’s reentry was photographically captured and transmitted from outer space to the Earth.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit recorded the final minutes of the Polaris Dawn, a private mission that included the first-ever paid spacewalk, as the SpaceX Dragon capsule touched down early Sunday (September 15).

“As for what one could see besides the bright streak across Florida, there is the basic cone shape of the Dragon capsule,” Pettit wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday afternoon describing the photo taken at the ISS.

Pettit, who launched for his fourth space mission to ISS on Sept. 11, is famous for beautiful photographs of star trails and other space phenomena taken from the ISS. He took the photo from the cupola which is a large window situated on the ISS which has its direction towards the earth.

He had some new lenses with better night vision as he mentioned in a pre-launch interview to Space.com, “We’ve got a few new lenses on board optimized for night time photography. I am looking forward to get back and take night time imagery to a new level. ”

His fellow crew members were also looking forward on seeing Pettit in action. The rocket uses an experimental lightweight Boeing JS for transportation, as NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick posted on X that many of them huddled together at the cupola to watch Polaris Dawn’s reentry. ‘It was cool when him and five of us were squeezed into the cupola setting up the shot,’ Dominick said.

sarcastically and jokingly he said, “Indeed the space could have made him have a shaky camera and self for the photo.

Boasting the name Polaris Dawn, the second mission funded by Jared Isaacman flew to the orbit aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on September, 10, 2019, from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Pettit was able to record during the arrival of the mission after five days in orbit.

Isaacman, who was the commander of the Polaris Dawn, again funded the mission and flew it after doing the same with SpaceX’s Inspiration4 last year. With him on Polaris Dawn were mission pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a business partner of Isaacman, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.

Besides, during the first commercial space walk Isaacman and Gillis worked outside the capsule and moreover at the height of 870 miles (1,400 km), which is the farthest distance any crewed spacecraft got since Apollo 17’s moon flight in 1972.

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