Mission complete - 'Amateur astronauts' return to Earth with a splash

Mission complete! Four amateur astronauts have successfully made their way back to Earth, after spending three days in space.

The crew left on a SpaceX capsule from Florida on Wednesday, and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.

Four parachutes slowed the capsule's journey home, before it landed in the water, where SpaceX boats travelled to collect it.

Inspiration4 is the first ever amateur team to orbit the Earth and the space travellers circled the planet more than 15 times each day during their mission.

The group spent their time doing experiments and looking at Earth as they travelled around it.

Jared Isaacman, left, and the rest of the team inside the capsule

The crew was led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who acted as mission "commander".

He had paid a huge sum of money to fellow billionaire and creator of SpaceX Elon Musk, for all four seats aboard his Crew Dragon space craft.

"That was a heck of a ride for us," Mr Isaacman radioed shortly after landing. "We're just getting started."

The billionaire used the trip to raise $200m (£146m) for St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee in the US and says the donation to St Jude's "vastly exceeds the cost of the mission".

Experts gathered data on the team's blood oxygen levels, sleep, thinking abilities and other vital signs during the trip, to find out more about how ordinary people can cope in space

The trip marks the third time Elon Musk's company has taken humans to space and back - paving the way for the future of space tourism.

"Congratulations @Inspiration4x !!!" he tweeted after the team's safe return.

"Welcome to the second space age," mission director Todd Ericson told a press conference, saying that after this, "space travel becomes much more accessible to average men and women."

Who is Jared Isaacman?

Billionaire Jared Isaacman paid for the mission

Jared Isaacman dropped out of school aged 16 and started a business in his parents' basement that eventually became Shift4, a credit card payment company.

The billionaire, who is also a pilot, said: "I truly want us to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping in their rockets and there are families bouncing around on the moon with their kid in a spacesuit."

Who else was on board?

Isaacman, Proctor, Arceneaux and Sembroski trained for six months

The rest of the crew included; Hayley Arceneaux, a healthcare worker at St Jude's Hospital. Now 29, Ms Arceneaux was treated for bone cancer at the hospital as a 10-year-old.

Dr Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old scientist who actually came close to being a Nasa astronaut in 2009, but missed out in the final round of selection.

And Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old US Air Force veteran who works as an engineer with the aerospace company.

Six months ago, the three were going about their everyday lives. Since then, they completed a quick course on how to be an astronaut, training with SpaceX in its capsule simulator.

Before the mission, talking about her surprise selection for the crew, Hayley Arceneaux said: "I think I'm the only person ever to just get a phone call saying, 'Hey, do you want to go to space?'."

Why the mission made history

The SpaceX Dragon capsule

The mission came after Sir Richard Branson's flight aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane on 11 July, and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin trip to space nine days later.

By international standards Virgin Galactic's mission did not actually go into space and the Blue Origin's mission only made it into space by a few miles.

But this mission, named Inspiration4, was different.

A SpaceX craft carrying the crew went into orbit, circling the Earth for three days.

Yuri Gagarin was the first person in space 60 years ago

It is 60 years since Soviet Union cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, since then fewer than 600 people have followed in his footsteps.

Most of those have been astronauts or cosmonauts who are military-trained and flying on government-funded missions.

The spacecraft

A large glass dome allowed the crew to look down on Planet Earth

Elon Musk's company SpaceX took the four-person crew into orbit.

Their spacecraft called Dragon, sat on top of a Falcon-9 rocket during lift off, before detaching once it left Earth's atmosphere.

The ship reached a height above the Earth of 575km (360 miles), which is about 150km higher than the International Space Station (ISS).

A large domed window on the craft replaced a hatch, which would normally be used to dock with the ISS, but wasn't needed for this mission, giving these amateur astronauts the most epic view imaginable.