After five eventful days in space, including the first-ever commercial spacewalk, the private astronaut crew of Polaris Dawn returns to Earth.
If all goes according to plan, SpaceX’s Dragon Resilience capsule — the orbital home of the four-person crew of private astronauts for the past five days — will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, on July 11. Sunday, September 15thapproximately 3:36 am EDT (0736 GMT), SpaceX said in an update that the landing will mark the end of Polaris Dawn, a mission to demonstrate the mobility and functionality of SpaceX's new spacesuit for spacewalks, and the completion of the first-ever spacewalk by a private citizen.
Coverage of Polaris Dawn's return will begin about an hour before landing. at 2:36 am EDT (0636 GMT) and will be available in SpaceX X account page and on the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission page.
Polaris Dawn launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday morning (Sept. 10) from Agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission’s leader (and its funding) is billionaire philanthropist Jared Isaacman. Isaacman also commanded SpaceX’s Inspiration4 in 2021, the first all-civilian flight to space, which also flew on SpaceX’s Resilience Dragon capsule. This time, Isaacman was joined by mission pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, as mission specialists.
Related: SpaceX Polaris Dawn astronauts conduct first private spacewalk in orbit (video)
As with Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn has been raising money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Inspiration4 raised over $250 million.
Aboard Resilience, the crew’s initial orbits during the first few days of the mission flew their spacecraft through parts of the Van Allen radiation belt, up to 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) above Earth — an altitude never before reached by a woman — making Gillis and Menon the female astronauts to fly the farthest in history, and farther than on any crewed mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.
While in their high elliptical orbit, the Polaris Dawn crew completed more than 35 experiments to study the effects of the novel microgravity environment on the human body, before lowering their altitude in preparation for the most critical demonstration of their mission: their historic spacewalk.
The Polaris Dawn spacewalk took place on the third day of the crew’s mission and lasted about two hours. Isaacman and Gillis, who took turns floating through Crew Dragon’s top hatch, performed a series of mobility tests to evaluate SpaceX’s new spacesuits. Using a specially designed mobility grappling structure, dubbed “Skywalker” by SpaceX engineers, Isaacman and Gillis each spent several minutes, mostly outside Dragon’s hatch, taking in the views of Earth as they completed suit checks.
Early this morning, via @Starlink space lasers, the Polaris Dawn crew chatted with SpaceX teams over coffee and donuts pic.twitter.com/nZ9v0VSyr5September 14, 2024
In addition to their spacewalk and other experiments, the Polaris Dawn crew reached another milestone by using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network to send data and content back from orbit. Amid their busy schedule, the crew was able to post on social media and send videos, photos, tributes, and even a musical performance back to Earth.
On Saturday (Sept. 14), they spoke via a Starlink video connection directly with SpaceX employees and guests during a 40-minute space-to-ground call that appeared to go smoothly, with no connection issues even as their Dragon capsule fired its thrusters 16 times, SpaceX said in an X update.
The crew was originally scheduled to launch into space on August 26, but was delayed by several days due to weather conditions at the mission's landing zones.
With only limited provisions on board for its five days in orbit, and no possibility of rendezvousing with another craft to resupply, such as a hub like the International Space Station, enabling favorable conditions for Polaris Dawn's ocean splashdown recovery is mission critical.