SpaceX is about to send four people on a wild — and risky — mission

 

On Monday, Isaacman and three crewmates — including his close friend and former Air Force pilot, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, as well as two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis — will arrive at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare for the launch of a far grander, more dangerous, and experimental trip to space.

Polaris Dawn crew members — including, from left, Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis — are seen inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

The mission, called Polaris Dawn, is slated to take off no earlier than 3:30 a.m. ET on August 26.
While prior missions to space that were funded by wealthy businesspeople may have conjured images of self-indulgent joy rides, Polaris Dawn is a test mission designed to push boundaries.
Isaacman, Menon, Gillis and Poteet will spend five days aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that will soar to altitudes higher than any human has traveled since NASA’s Apollo program ended in the 1970s. Their orbital path will extend high enough to plunge the vehicle and crew into a radiation belt, adding another element of peril to the already treacherous experience of spaceflight.

This crew of private citizens will also open the hatch of their spacecraft and expose themselves to the vacuum of space, marking the first time such a feat has been attempted by non-government astronauts. During this endeavor, the astronauts will be protected solely by brand-new Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) suits, which SpaceX designed and developed in just two and a half years.

1. The International Space Station orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. 

2. The Hubble Space Telescope, which NASA astronauts have conducted spacewalks to repair, orbits about 320 miles (515 kilometers) high. 

3. The innermost of two bands that make up the Van Allen radiation belts begins at about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). 

4. The Polaris Dawn mission will reach a maximum altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) before lowering its apogee for the spacewalk

An unprecedented mission
First announced in 2022, Polaris Dawn is the first of three testing and development missions under the Polaris Program that Isaacman said he will jointly execute and fund alongside SpaceX. He declined to say how much this mission cost.
The end goal of the Polaris Program is to take the first steps toward validating technology that SpaceX will one day need if it carries humans deeper into the cosmos — including spacesuits, EVA and life-support technologies.

After launch, the Polaris Dawn crew will travel into an oval-shaped orbit that extends as high as 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) from Earth. That’s well into the inner band of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, which begin at around 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in altitude. The belts are areas where concentrations of high-energy particles that come from the sun and interact with Earth’s atmosphere are trapped, creating two dangerous bands of radiation, according to NASA.