A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule carries the crew of the Polaris Dawn mission.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission launched Tuesday from Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, which placed the Dragon capsule “Resilience” into orbit.
This is the first of three missions purchased from SpaceX in 2022 by billionaire and Shift4 founder Jared Isaacman for his crewed spaceflight effort known as the Polaris program.
The multi-day trip is not headed to a destination like the International Space Station, but rather a free-flight mission that follows an orbit the crew hopes will take them far from Earth.
As a central element of the mission, the crew will attempt the first SpaceX spacewalk. Extravehicular activities, or EVAs, have been a regular part of government spaceflight missions, but no private enterprise has attempted an EVA before. The EVA is expected to last two hours from start to finish.
In addition to spacewalks, Polaris Dawn plans to conduct approximately 40 scientific and research experiments during its mission.
The launch has been delayed several times in recent weeks due to bad weather and helium leaks.
Isaacman will command the mission and lead a four-person crew, including SpaceX’s first two employees, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, into space. This will be Isaacman’s second time in orbit, following the historic Inspiration4 flight in 2021.
Polaris Dawn is SpaceX’s 14th crewed space mission to date and the fifth privately funded crewed spaceflight.
