Four non-professional astronauts are now orbiting Earth inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft following a successful launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida early on Tuesday.
Jared Isaacman, the billionaire businessman who has helped to fund the Polaris Dawn mission, is in orbit with Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both lead space operations engineers at SpaceX.
There’s a lot of buzz around the five-day Polaris Dawn mission, partly because two of the crew members, Isaacman and Gillis, are set to conduct the first-ever commercial spacewalk, which could take place as soon as Thursday. It will also be the first time that humans have emerged from a Crew Dragon directly into the vacuum of space, as most Crew Dragon missions involve it docking with the International Space Station (ISS).
The spacewalk will see Isaacman and Gillis conduct the first in-orbit test of the new SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits, upgraded from the current intravehicular (IVA) suit. The spacesuit offers greater mobility and comfort than current designs and the goal is to use a version of it on upcoming missions to the moon and Mars.
Additionally, the Crew Dragon will fly as high as 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) above Earth, making it the highest that humans have traveled in our planet’s orbit since the Apollo program five decades ago. The mission also takes the spacecraft way higher than the ISS, which orbits Earth at about 250 miles (402 kilometers) up.
The Polaris Dawn crew will also be the first to test Starlink laser-based communications in space, an endeavor that’s expected to provide valuable data for future space communications systems necessary for missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
They’ll also spend their time working on a slew of experiments that will include health and human performance research for NASA’s Human Research Program.
“The research will help NASA scientists better understand how exposure to space conditions affects the human body,” the space agency said, adding that the crew will also test new medical approaches and technology on telemedicine capabilities, gather data on space motion sickness, and conduct research to better characterize flight-associated injury risks.