The SpaceX capsule carrying the crew on the first private citizen’s spacewalk finally lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Tuesday morning.
The Polaris Dawn mission’s commander, fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, and three other crew members blasted off in Hawthorne’s Crew Dragon spacecraft during a five-day mission that will take them to the highest orbit above Earth since the Apollo missions.
The flight was initially delayed by a leak in a launchpad hose that pumps helium into SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which will send Crew Dragon into orbit. The Federal Aviation Administration also dealt with its Falcon 9 fleet after one of its reusable boosters tipped over and burst into flames while landing on an offshore barge in the Atlantic Ocean.
Further delays were caused by extended bad weather forecasts that led to the capsule splashing down off the coast of Florida. Crew Dragon was developed to service the International Space Station, but the crew will not dock with a laboratory and will only carry limited supplies.
Isaacman and fellow crew member Sarah Gillis, an employee of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, are scheduled to conduct the first commercial spacewalk on the mission’s third day. They will test a new generation of form-fitting spacesuits that SpaceX says are necessary for colonizing the Moon and Mars. They have been in development for several years.
Polaris Dawn is the first flight of Polaris Dawn, a private space program funded by Isaacman, a 41-year-old American entrepreneur who founded Shift4Payments, a Pennsylvania company that processes payments across multiple industries, and is currently worth $1.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The pilot was Scott “Kid” Poteet, 50, a retired Air Force Lt. Col. The fourth crew member, Anna Menon, also works for SpaceX. This was the first spaceflight for everyone except Isaacson, who funded and commanded the first private space mission in September 2021.
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