SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Tuesday morning, sending four people, including a billionaire, into orbit, with the aim of testing new space suits manufactured by the company.
Residents of Massachusetts caught a glimpse of the vessel after its launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida just before 5:30 a.m. People from East Longmeadow to Harding’s Beach in Chatham were able to see the launch flying in the early morning sky.
The Polaris Dawn’s crew includes tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who is splitting the cost of the mission with SpaceX, as well as two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot.
If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won’t venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.
The crew is attempting to go further into space than any mission aside from those that flew to the moon. Polaris Dawn is set to spend 10 hours at an altitude of around 870 miles, an area filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris.
They will then reduce the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew.
All four wore SpaceX’s spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment.
Isaacman and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They’ll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder.
At a preflight news conference, Isaacman — CEO and founder of the credit card processing company Shift4 — refused to say how much he invested in the flight. “Not a chance,” he said.
SpaceX teamed up with Isaacman to pay for spacesuit development and associated costs, said William Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president who once headed space mission operations for NASA.
It’s the first of three trips that Isaacman bought from Elon Musk 2 1/2 years ago, soon after returning from his first private SpaceX spaceflight in 2021. Isaacman bankrolled that tourist ride for an undisclosed sum, taking along contest winners and a childhood cancer survivor. The trip raised hundreds of millions for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The Associated Press contributed to this reporting.
