Polaris Dawn commander Jared Isaacman emerges from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule during a spacewalk on September 12, 2024.
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A SpaceX capsule carrying four civilians landed off the coast of Florida at 3:36 a.m. ET on Sunday, ending a historic mission that included the world’s first civilian spacewalk.
Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon returned to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon capsule. Off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Polaris Dawn, mission accomplished!” the radio operators announced over a booming radio as the recovery ship headed toward the capsule floating in 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 expedition to date, as the crew and spacecraft performed several risky maneuvers.
The most significant of these was the all-civilian spacewalk on Thursday, when Isaacman and Gillis tethered themselves from the Dragon capsule and spent about 10 minutes each in the vacuum of space. The pair performed mobility tests during the spacewalk wearing newly designed spacesuits.
This outing was a risky one, as the Dragon capsule did not have a pressurized airlock, meaning all four members of the Polaris Dawn mission wore spacesuits during the spacewalk, and the entire capsule was depressurized into a vacuum.
The completion of the spacewalk was a significant milestone in the history of human spaceflight. Previously, only astronauts from government space agencies had performed spacewalks to build or upgrade orbital space stations, repair satellites, or complete scientific experiments.
Earlier in the mission, the Polaris Dawn crew flew to an orbital altitude of 870 miles above the Earth’s surface, the highest altitude reached by humans since the last Apollo moon mission in 1972.
At that time, the capsule was far enough away to pass through part of the Van Allen radiation belts, a region of high-energy radiation particles trapped in the Earth’s magnetosphere. This journey allows scientists to study the effects of cosmic radiation on crews and spacecraft. SpaceX said the findings could help plan missions to the moon and eventually Mars, which would require astronauts to pass through the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts.
Isaacman is the founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4. He was a member of the first private SpaceX mission to orbit in 2021, and funded the second, the Polaris Dawn mission, for an undisclosed amount.
The Polaris Dawn flight is designed to test new technologies and procedures for future long-duration missions. It is expected to be the first of three planned spaceflights for the Polaris program that Isaacman has launched with SpaceX. He did not disclose the cost of the program or when the other missions might launch.
