A white spacecraft, slightly toasted like a marshmallow and smelling of burnt metal, fell from the night sky early Sunday morning and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico not far from Key West.
The dark waters there were carefully chosen from dozens of potential landing sites near Florida. That’s because the wind and seas were predicted to be especially calm and serene like the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Resilience It floated out to sea and rocked gently, awaiting the arrival of a recovery ship.
Waiting inside was a four-person crew: Commander Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who funded the mission and had just completed his second private spaceflight; SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who were the company’s first employees to fly in orbit; and pilot Kidd Poteet.
They were happy to be home.
“We’ve accomplished the mission,” Isaacman said after the spacecraft landed.
A significant success
Their mission, arguably the most ambitious private space flight to date, was a complete success. Dubbed Polaris Dawn, the mission flew to an altitude of 1,408.1 kilometers on the first day of flight. It is the highest-altitude mission ever conducted in Earth orbit and the furthest humans have traveled since the Apollo missions more than half a century ago.
Photo: SpaceX/Getty Images
Then, on the third day of the flight, the four crew members donned spacesuits designed and developed over the past two years. After venting the cabin atmosphere into space, first Isaacman and then Gillis spent several minutes extending their bodies outside the Dragon spacecraft. This was the first private spacewalk in history.
While this foray into space largely replicated what the Soviet Union and then the United States did in the mid-1960s with tethered spacewalks, it was nonetheless significant. These commercial spacesuits cost a fraction of what government suits do and can be considered version 1.0 of the suits that could one day allow many people to walk in space, on the Moon and, eventually, on Mars.
Finally, on the mission’s final full day in space, the Dragon spacecraft demonstrated its connectivity to a network of Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit. The crew held a 40-minute, uninterrupted video call with flight operators at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. During that time, the company said, Dragon maintained contact via laser links with the Starlink satellites through 16 firings of the spacecraft’s Draco thrusters.
This test demonstrated the feasibility of using the thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit as a means of providing high-speed internet to people and spacecraft in space.
Wait, isn’t this just a multi-million dollar ride?
Some people have misinterpreted the mission. They saw in Isaacman a fintech billionaire satisfying his desire to go to space, inside a manned vehicle built by Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. So this seemed to be simply a rollercoaster ride for the ultra-rich and famous, for those who couldn’t satiate their thrill-seeking with the pleasures attainable on planet Earth.
I understand this point of view, but I do not share it.