One of the The most ambitious space tourism mission in history has launched, and the all-commercial crew is preparing to hit a number of milestones during their five days in space, including the first privately funded human spacewalk.
The mission, called Polaris Dawn, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today, Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 5:23 a.m. Eastern Time. The four-person crew, riding inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle aboard one of the California company’s Falcon 9 rockets, includes Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who funded the mission, SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, and pilot Scott Poteet.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, says the mission’s pioneering spacewalk is a “gimmick” in some ways. “But if we look at it as developing the capability, independent of NASA, to do spacewalks, that’s potentially important,” he says.
The launch of Polaris Dawn, which was initially planned for late August, was delayed first by technical and weather issues, and later by a failed landing of another Falcon 9 rocket, causing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to temporarily ground the Falcon 9 fleet. The crew remained in quarantine during the flight, but kept busy with additional training.
Following launch, the Crew Dragon spacecraft was placed into an orbit that will take it as high as 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) above the Earth’s surface, making it the farthest distance astronauts will have traveled since the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon in 1972, and the highest altitude ever reached by a woman. “This is the farthest distance humans have traveled since humans last walked on the Moon,” Isaacman said in a statement. Pre-launch briefing at Kennedy Space Center on August 19.
Isaacman, the CEO of US payments company Shift4, flew into space earlier in September 2021 on the Inspiration4 mission. That mission, which also took place on a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle, cost around $100 million. up to 200 million dollarsshowcased SpaceX’s ability to let the ultra-rich pay for the ultimate thrill — a trip to orbit as a space tourist. (The cost of the Polaris Dawn mission has not been disclosed.)
Space tourism missions have been carried out several times before, Since 2001 While American entrepreneur Dennis Tito became the first paying customer aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule bound for the International Space Station (ISS), dozens of paying customers of companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have also made brief suborbital “hops” into space lasting minutes in recent years.
But Crew Dragon, partially funded by Almost 5 billion dollars The money NASA has put into transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 brings a whole new angle to these missions. The vehicle, as spacious as a large car and capable of seating seven passengers, can launch customized flights to Earth orbit, not just the International Space Station, and enable new types of missions.