One of them The most ambitious space tourism mission in history has launched, with a purely commercial crew set to spend five days in space achieving a number of milestones, including the first privately funded manned spacewalk.
The mission, called Polaris Dawn, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:23 a.m. ET today, Tuesday, September 10. The four-person crew, traveling inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle atop one of the California company’s Falcon 9 rockets, included billionaire Jared Isaacman, who helped fund 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 in some ways a “gimmick.” “But if you look at it as developing the ability to do spacewalks independently of NASA, it could potentially be significant,” he says.
Originally scheduled to launch in late August, Polaris Dawn was first delayed due to technical issues and weather, and then later due to the landing failure of another Falcon 9 rocket, which caused the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to temporarily ground the Falcon 9 fleet. The crew was quarantined during that time, but they were busy. Additional Education.
After launch, the Crew Dragon spacecraft entered an orbit about 1,400 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. That’s the farthest an astronaut has traveled from Earth since Apollo 17 landed on the moon in 1972, and the highest altitude a woman has ever reached. “This is the farthest a human has traveled since the last time humans set foot on the moon,” Isaacman said. Pre-launch briefing August 19th at Kennedy Space Center.
Isaacman, CEO of US payments company Shift4, flew into space on the Inspiration4 mission in September 2021. The mission, which also took place aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle, came at a cost of somewhere. Up to $200 millionSpaceX has demonstrated its ability to enable the ultra-wealthy to pay for the ultimate thrill of orbital travel as space tourists. (The cost of the Polaris Dawn mission has not been disclosed.)
Space tourism missions have occurred several times before. Starting in 2001 When American businessman Dennis Tito became the first paying passenger to board a Russian Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station (ISS), dozens of paying passengers from companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have also made short suborbital “hops” into space, lasting a few minutes.
However, Crew Dragon was partially funded. Nearly $5 billion Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, the funding NASA has invested in transporting astronauts to and from the ISS has given these missions a whole new angle. The vehicle, which is as wide as a large passenger car and can carry up to seven passengers, can launch tailored flights to Earth orbit as well as the ISS and perform new types of missions.
