One of The most ambitious space tourism mission in history has been launched, with the all-privately funded crew on track to achieve a number of milestones during their five-day stay in space, including the first-ever privately funded manned spacewalk.
The mission, called Polaris Dawn, launched at 5:23 a.m. ET today, Tuesday, September 10, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The four-person crew traveling aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft aboard one of the California company’s Falcon 9 rockets are billionaire Jared Isaacman, 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, said the mission’s pioneering spacewalk is in some ways a “gimmick,” “but it’s potentially important as we develop the capability to do spacewalks independent of NASA.”
Polaris Dawn, originally scheduled to launch at the end of August, was postponed due to technical issues and weather, and then the failure of another Falcon 9 rocket to land led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to temporarily ground the Falcon 9 fleet. The crew remained in quarantine during that time. Additional Training.
After launch, the Crew Dragon spacecraft was placed into an orbit that would take it 1,400 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the furthest astronauts have reached from Earth since the Apollo 17 moon mission in 1972, and the highest altitude reached by a woman. “This is the furthest mankind has traveled since we last walked on the moon,” astronaut Isaacman said in a statement. Pre-launch briefing on Aug. 19 at the Kennedy Space Center.
Isaacman, CEO of US payments company Shift4, blasted into space in September 2021 on the Inspiration 4 mission, which also took place on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and cost around Up to $200 millionThe Polaris Dawn mission demonstrated SpaceX’s ability to get the ultra-wealthy to pay for the ultimate thrill of traveling into orbit as space tourists. (The cost of the Polaris Dawn mission was not disclosed.)
Space tourism missions have been conducted many times in the past, Since 2001 That began when American businessman Dennis Tito became the first paying passenger to fly to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Over the past few years, dozens of paying passengers with companies including Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have also taken to space on short, suborbital “hops” that last a few minutes.
However, Crew Dragon Approximately $5 billion Funded by NASA to transport astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) after the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, the spacecraft brings an entirely new perspective to such missions. The spacecraft, about the size of a large car and capable of carrying up to seven people, can be customized to fly to the ISS as well as into Earth orbit, enabling new types of missions.
