
At 3:36 a.m. ET on Sunday, a SpaceX capsule carrying four private individuals splashed down off the coast of Florida, capping a historic mission that featured the first-ever spacewalk involving just civilians.
In a Crew Dragon capsule, billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, former Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon made a splashdown return to Earth in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida.
Over the crackle of a radio, operators declared, “Polaris Dawn, we are mission complete,” as rescue vessels approached the capsule bobbing in the dark sea.
For the first time in five days, passengers were seen joyfully exiting the capsule and greeting staff members with cheers and hugs. This was captured on camera by X.
The fifth private mission for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule was the Polaris Dawn trip. A number of daring maneuvers were carried out by the crew and their spacecraft, making it the company’s most ambitious mission yet.
The most important of them was Thursday’s all-civilian spacewalk. After leaving the Dragon capsule via a tether, Gillis and Isaacman each spent around ten minutes in the vacuum of space. Using their newly built spacesuits, the pair tested their mobility during the spacewalk.
Due to the lack of a pressurized airlock in the Dragon capsule, the expedition was a dangerous one. This implied that the entire Polaris Dawn capsule was depressurized to vacuum conditions and that each of the four mission participants donned a spacesuit during the spacewalk.
A significant event in the history of human spaceflight was the spacewalk’s completion. In the past, spacewalks were exclusively carried out by astronauts employed by government space agencies to construct or renovate space stations, fix satellites, and finish scientific research.
The Polaris Dawn crew achieved the highest orbital height for humans since the last Apollo moon mission in 1972, reaching 870 miles above Earth’s surface earlier in the mission.
The Van Allen radiation belt, a region of high-energy radiation particles trapped by Earth’s magnetosphere, might be partially traversed by the capsule due to its sufficient distance. Scientists will be able to examine how space radiation affects the astronauts and their spacecraft during the voyage. The results, according to SpaceX, may be useful in organizing trips to the moon and eventually Mars, where travelers would have to pass through the inner and outer Van Allen belts.
Shift4 is a payment processing company that Isaacman founded and serves as its CEO. on 2021, he participated in the inaugural SpaceX mission comprised solely of civilians and contributed an undisclosed amount to finance his second voyage, Polaris Dawn.
The purpose of the Polaris Dawn trip was to test new systems and protocols in preparation for longer-duration future missions. It is anticipated to be the first of three space missions in Isaacman’s Polaris program, which he launched alongside SpaceX. He has not disclosed the program’s cost or the potential launch date for the other missions.