Polaris Dawn commander Jared Isaacman emerges from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule during a spacewalk on September 12, 2024.
SpaceX
A SpaceX capsule carrying four private individuals crashed off the coast of Florida before dawn at 3:36 am. ET on Sunday morning, ending a historic mission that included the world’s first all-civilian spacewalk.
Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon have returned to Earth in a Crew Dragon capsule, flying to off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Polaris Dawn mission complete,” the operators announced with the crackle of a radio as the recovery craft headed for the capsule ejecting into the night sea.
THE five-day Polaris Dawn flight marked the fifth private mission for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. It was also the company’s most ambitious mission, as the crew members and their spacecraft performed several dangerous maneuvers.
Chief among them was purely civilian spacewalk that took place on Thursday. Isaacman and Gillis exited the Dragon capsule in a tether, each spending about 10 minutes out in the void of space. The duo spent the spacewalk performing mobility tests in their newly designed spacesuits.
Getting out was a risky venture, because the Dragon capsule does not have a pressurized air vent. This meant that all four members of the Polaris Dawn mission wore spacesuits during the spacewalk and the entire capsule was decompressed in vacuum conditions.
The completion of the spacewalk was a major milestone in the history of human spaceflight. Previously, only astronauts from government space agencies had performed spacewalks to build or upgrade orbiting space stations, repair satellites, and complete science experiments.
Earlier in the mission, the Polaris Dawn crew flew to an orbital altitude of 870 miles above Earth’s surface, the highest humans have reached since the final Apollo moon mission in 1972.
At the time, the capsule was far enough to pass through part of the Van Allen radiation belt, a belt of high-energy radiation particles trapped by Earth’s magnetosphere. The trip will allow scientists to study the effects of space radiation on crew members and their spacecraft. SpaceX said the findings could help plan missions to the moon and eventually Mars, which would require astronauts to fly through the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts.
Isaacman is the founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4. He was part of SpaceX’s first all-civilian mission to orbit in 2021 and funded the Polaris Dawn mission, its second spaceflight, for an undisclosed amount.
The Polaris Dawn flight was designed to test new technologies and procedures for future long-duration missions. It is expected to be the first of three planned space flights in the Polaris program, which Isaacman launched with SpaceX. It has not disclosed the cost of the program or when the other missions might begin.
