
Early on Tuesday, a SpaceX capsule filled with four private citizens took off on a five-day mission that will see the first spacewalk executed by a crew composed entirely of civilians.
At 5:24 a.m. ET, the Polaris Dawn mission blasted out from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center located in Florida.
The goal of the journey is to take the four crew members 870 miles above Earth’s surface, the highest orbital altitude that humans have reached since the last Apollo moon mission in 1972. Compared to the International Space Station, that is more than three times higher. The team will test new technologies and spacesuits while in orbit, which may open the door for longer-term space trips to the moon and eventually Mars in the future.
The Polaris Dawn flight was originally scheduled for late August, but it was rescheduled due to bad weather off the coast of Florida, where the SpaceX spacecraft would splashdown at the end of the expedition after a helium leak was discovered at the launch pad.
The four members of the crew are SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon; former Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet; and millionaire businessman Jared Isaacman, who founded and serves as CEO of the payment processing company Shift4. Isaacman is funding the Polaris Dawn mission in collaboration with SpaceX. Isaacman previously funded and participated in the first all-civilian SpaceX flight to orbit in 2021.
On the third day of the mission, there will be a spacewalk. Since the Crew Dragon spacecraft lacks a pressurized airlock, the entire capsule will be depressurized and exposed to vacuum conditions when Isaacman and Gillis escape the craft on a tether. For this reason, during the spacewalk, all four astronauts will don and test recently created spacesuits.
If the trip is a success, history will be made. In the past, the only people who have entered space to build or renovate space stations in orbit, fix satellites, and carry out scientific research have been astronauts from government space agencies.
The orbit of the Crew Dragon capsule will fly far enough away from Earth for it to travel through the inside of the Van Allen radiation belt, which is an area of high-energy radiation particles trapped by the magnetosphere of Earth.
Scientists will be able to investigate how space radiation affects both the vehicle and the astronauts through this voyage. Future SpaceX trips to the moon and Mars, which would need personnel to fly through the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts, may benefit from the discoveries.
In collaboration with SpaceX, Isaacman started the Polaris program to evaluate tools and techniques for space exploration beyond Earth’s orbit. The billionaire is supporting three planned space missions, the first of which is Polaris Dawn. The program’s cost, as well as the potential goals and schedule for the remaining missions, have not been revealed by him.