FIRST OF THREE POLARIS MISSIONS
The spacewalk followed an audacious first phase of the mission, during which the Dragon spacecraft reached a peak altitude of 870 miles – three times higher than the International Space Station, in a region teeming with dangerous, high-energy particles.
All four underwent more than two years of training in preparation for the landmark mission, logging hundreds of hours on simulators as well as skydiving, scuba diving and summiting an Ecuadoran volcano.
Upcoming tasks include testing laser-based satellite communications between the spacecraft and the vast Starlink satellite constellation, and completing dozens of experiments, including tests on contact lenses with embedded microelectronics to monitor changes in eye pressure and shape in space.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions under the Polaris program, a collaboration between Isaacman and SpaceX.
Financial terms of the partnership remain under wraps, but Isaacman, the 41-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4Payments, reportedly poured $200 million of his fortune into leading the 2021 all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration4 orbital mission.
The final Polaris mission aims to be the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship, a prototype next-generation rocket that is key to founder Musk’s ambitions of colonizing Mars.
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