The private Polaris Dawn mission lifted off at 5:23 a.m. Tuesday in Florida, marking the first private spacewalk.
“We wouldn’t be on this journey without the 14,000 of you (who work for us) at home,” Jared Isaacman, the tech billionaire who commands and finances Polaris Dawn, wrote on X shortly after it reached Earth’s orbit, 12 minutes after launch. “Now we get to work too.”
Jared Isaacman has already paid for a first private mission, Inspiration4 in 2021. Mr. Isaacman paid with SpaceX for the adaptation of the Crew Dragon capsule to allow spacewalks, as well as the modification of SpaceX’s spacesuit.
Polaris Dawn has been delayed several times this summer. It was originally scheduled for early August, then later this month. A helium leak in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket delayed the launch on August 27, then bad weather, and finally a landing accident involving another Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission includes a former U.S. military pilot and two SpaceX engineers, one of whom, Sarah Gillis, will spacewalk with Mr. Isaacman midway through the five-day mission.
The mission will reach an altitude of 1,400 km, the highest of any manned orbital mission. For comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope has an orbit of 535 km and the space station and the International Space Station have an orbit of 400 km.
Hubble
Mme Gillis and teammate Anna Menon will become the highest-altitude women in history. The record is currently held by American Kathryn Sullivan, who in 1990 was part of the shuttle Discovery mission that put Hubble into orbit.
Only the Apollo lunar program sent humans farther from Earth. The four astronauts of Polaris Dawn will face radiation from the “van Allen belt,” which is more harmful because it is no longer intercepted by the Earth’s magnetic field.
The spacewalk, scheduled for the third day of the mission, will take place at an altitude of 700 km, under the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field.
Two more Polaris Dawn missions are planned, including the first crewed mission of SpaceX’s Starship moon rocket, after 100 cargo launches to Earth orbit.
Learn more
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- 250 million US
- Amount raised in donations for St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Tennessee during the Inspiration4 mission in 2021
source: Polaris dawn