By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Four private astronauts returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Friday after roughly four days orbiting the planet in a novel polar trajectory, walking out of their spacecraft with little assistance to cap off the Elon Musk-led company's sixth fully private space mission.

A wealthy space tourist and three fellow adventurers plunged back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Friday, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California to close out the first crewed flight around Earth's poles.

The four crew members of the private Fram2 mission returned to Earth on Friday after spending more than 3 1/2 days circling the planet on the first human spaceflight on a polar orbit. The SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience made a parachute-assisted splashdown off the California coast at 9:19 a.