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.”
Originally scheduled to launch in late August, Polaris Dawn was delayed first by technical issues and weather, and then after 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, but kept themselves busy with additional training.
After liftoff, the Crew Dragon spacecraft was placed into an orbit that would take it 1,400 kilometers above Earth’s surface, the furthest astronauts have traveled from Earth since the Apollo 17 mission to the moon in 1972, and the highest altitude ever reached by a woman. “This is the furthest mankind has traveled since we last walked on the moon,” astronaut Isaacman said during a pre-launch briefing at the Kennedy Space Center on August 19.
Isaacman, CEO of US payments company Shift4, flew into space in September 2021 on the Inspiration 4 mission, also on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which cost up to $200 million. The mission showcased SpaceX’s ability to get the ultra-rich to pay for the ultimate thrill of going into orbit as a space tourist. (The cost of the Polaris Dawn mission was not disclosed.)
Space tourism missions have been around for a long time, starting in 2001 when American businessman Dennis Tito became the first paying passenger to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. In recent years, dozens of paying passengers with companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have also taken short, suborbital flights into space for a few minutes.
But Crew Dragon, funded in part by NASA to pay about $5 billion to transport astronauts to the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, brings an entirely new perspective to such missions. The spacecraft is about the size of a large car and can accommodate up to seven passengers, enabling custom flights to the International Space Station as well as Earth orbit, enabling new types of missions.
