SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission launches, will try spacewalk

SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission launched on Tuesday from Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket, which carried the Dragon capsule “Resilience” into orbit.

It’s the first of three missions that billionaire and Shift4 founder Jared Isaacman purchased from SpaceX in 2022 for his human spaceflight effort known as the Polaris Program.

The multi-day trip isn’t headed to a destination like the International Space Station, but instead is a free-flying mission tracing orbits that the crew hopes will go far from Earth.

As a centerpiece to the mission, the crew will attempt to perform the first-ever SpaceX spacewalk. Extravehicular activities, or EVAs, have been a regular part of government astronauts missions but no private venture has attempted an EVA before. The EVA is expected to last two hours long from start to finish.

In addition to the spacewalk, Polaris Dawn plans to conduct about 40 science and research experiments during the mission.

The launch had been postponed multiple times over the past few weeks because of unfavorable weather conditions and a helium leak.

Isaacman is commanding the mission, leading a crew of four that includes the first two SpaceX employees, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, to go to space. This is Isaacman’s second time going to orbit, having led the historic Inspiration4 flight in 2021.

Polaris Dawn represents SpaceX’s 14th crewed mission to date, and its fifth private human spaceflight.