Ukulele Performance On Board SpaceX's First All-Civilian Flight

Chris Sembroski, an US Air Force veteran, strummed a few chords for home-bound viewers during a 10-minute show-and-tell session by the four-member Inspiration4 team as they flew at about 17,500 miles per hour over Europe.

A 42-year-old data engineer on the first all-civilian astronaut crew to reach orbit made some spaceflight history on Friday, with a zero-gravity ukulele performance in a SpaceX capsule hundreds of miles above Earth's surface.

Chris Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin employee and US Air Force veteran, strummed a few chords for home-bound viewers during a 10-minute show-and-tell session by the four-member Inspiration4 team as they flew at about 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km per hour) over Europe.

SpaceX, the private rocketship company owned by high-tech mogul and Tesla Inc electric automaker CEO Elon Musk, announced afterward that the crew was expected to return to Earth on Saturday. Splashdown was set for just after 7 pm EDT (2300 GMT) in the Atlantic off Florida's coast, the company said.

To prepare for the re-entry and return, the spacecraft completed two rocket "burns" on Friday to reduce altitude and line up the capsule's trajectory with the landing site.