SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn Mission Returns Safely to Earth
“We are mission complete,” Jared Isaacman radioed SpaceX’s mission control after it splashed down at 3:36 a.m. ET Sunday, 70 miles west of Key West. After the Crew Dragon capsule was hoisted onto a ship, Isaacman and his three fellow crew members emerged on deck, cheering and pumping their fists for having successfully completed the five-day Polaris Dawn mission.
Billionaire Isaacman, along with two SpaceX employees and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot, made history by crossing several milestones during the flight. Polaris Dawn orbited about 460 miles above Earth, at one point reaching an altitude of 875 miles, which broke the record for non-lunar missions last set by the Apollo flights in the 1970s.
Jared Isaacman emerges from the “Resilience” space capsule after the five-day mission.
Polaris Program
But the real record was the first civilian spacewalk, which Isaacman and crew member Sarah Gillis completed on Thursday. The two-hour adventure was much shorter than a typical ISS spacewalk by a professional astronaut. In this case, Isaacman emerged from the open hatch to just over his waist, stayed in that position for about 10 minutes, and reentered the capsule so Gillis could emerge to flex her arms and legs in space for several minutes. The hatch was open for about 30 minutes, but the rest of the time was devoted to depressurizing the capsule and then filling it with air.
The brief spacewalk was designed as an initial test of SpaceX’s new spacesuit, which Elon Musk publicly displayed in May. During the exercise, SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet remained strapped in their seats inside the capsule, wearing their spacesuits.
SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis emerges from the capsule to test the spacesuit.
Polaris Program
The mission had several other potentially dangerous components, including passing through a radiation belt that exposed the crew to the same levels of radiation that astronauts would receive in two months aboard the International Space Station.
The “de-orbit burn,” as Resilience descended, involved passing through the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere, where it hit temperatures of up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit while traveling at 17,000 mph. The parachutes eventually slowed the descent to 15 mph for splashdown.
The crew watch screens as the capsule descends.
SpaceX
During the five days, the team also completed 34 experiments for 30 institutions.
But there were lighter moments as well. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, performed in orbit, while Menon, who co-authored a children’s book about space, read passages to her children and patients at St. Jude’s Cancer Center for Children via a Starlink satellite connection.
Isaacman previously raised $250 million for the charity during his first SpaceX flight in 2021. The CEO of the Shift4 credit card processing company has another mission reserved with SpaceX, with no firm schedule. On that trip, he and crew mates will circumnavigate the moon.
