The all-civilian mission is set to achieve multiple firsts aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon.
SpaceX's Polaris Dawn Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Launch Complex 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on September 10, 2024 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Polaris Dawn mission is a private spaceflight backed by Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payments platform company Shift4.mission, fired his spacecraft engine on Sept. 14, 1966 to climb to a record orbital altitude of 850 miles, he didn’t keep his enthusiasm contained.
Conrad died in 1999, but his altitude record would stand for another 25 years. Until now. Yesterday, Sept. 10, it was broken, when the four crewmembers of the all-civilianflew their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft up to a new high, or apogee, of 870 miles, venturing farther from Earth than any humans on a non-lunar journey have ever gone.
“Some of the research that we will do really digs into that radiation environment looking at how medications perform when exposed to that sort of radiation, looking at whether you can develop diagnostic technologies in that environment, such as X-ray images,” crew member and medical officer Anna Menon told TIME. “These sorts of learnings will be really strong tools as we pursue longer duration such as missions to Mars.
Even bigger things are on tap for this week. On Thursday, Sept. 12, Isaacman and crewmate Sarah Gillis are scheduled to embark on the first extravehicular activity , or spacewalk, by civilian astronauts—an exercise that will be risky not just for them but for Menon and crewmate Scott Poteet, who will remain inside the spacecraft.
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