Early Tuesday morning, at approximately 5:23 a.m. EST, the Polaris Dawn was finally launched into Earth’s Van Allen radiation belt from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Aboard the Crew Dragon capsule are four astronauts in total ~ Billionaire Jared Isaacman (founder of Shift4 Payments), Engineer Anna Menon (Medical Director at SpaceX), Engineer Sarah Gills (SpaceX mission specialist), and Scott “Kidd” Poteet (ex-U.S. Air Force pilot).
This is the first spacewalk attempted that involved non-professional astronauts. It is also Isaacman’s second time in space and he will be acting as the mission leader.
As the ground controllers watched the capsule make its way into the Earth’s orbit, they could be heard letting the 4 membered crew know that they were not alone, and that their courage would be lighting “the path for future explorers.”
“We trust your skills, your bravery, and your teamwork to carry out the mission that lies ahead,” they said. “Know that the entire team back here is with you every step, watching, supporting and cheering you on as you walk into space. We’re sending you hugs from the ground.”
SpaceX had previously planned for the Falcon 9 rocket to be lifted off in August but later had to postpone it due to complications from the weather and a helium leak. According to Isaacman during a news conference, the five-day Polaris Dawn mission will help to further the research into learning about how the space environment may affect human health.
“We stand to learn quite a bit from [that environment] in terms of human health science and research. If we get to Mars someday, we’d love to be able to come back and be healthy enough to tell people about it, so I think that it’s worthwhile to get some exposure in that environment.”
CNN reported that SpaceX’s recent mission with the Polaris Dawn also aims to send its crew to an altitude higher than any previous human spaceflight in Earth’s orbit. If they successfully achieve this, they would be breaking the existing record set by NASA’s Gemini 11 mission in 1966. Data shows that at the time Gemini 11 was able to reach about 1,373 km above the planet.