A little while ago, the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on the Polaris Dawn mission. After just over twelve minutes, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage. It will spend about five days in orbit on a completely private crewed space mission. For the first time, a spacewalk is planned during a private space mission.
The four crew members of the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft are:
Jared Isaacman. A businessman and airline pilot, he’s the commander of the Resilience. In 2021, he already led Inspiration4, the first private space mission, which he wanted and funded as CEO of Shift4 Payments.
Scott Poteet. Born on December 7, 1973, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he served in the U.S. Air Force, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. After retiring from the Air Force, he worked at various companies, including Shift4 Payments. He has experience as a pilot of airplanes and is the pilot of Resilience.
Sarah Gillis. Born on January 1, 1994, in Palo Alto, California, she graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in aerospace engineering. She was still a student when she began an internship at SpaceX, where she went to work as an engineer.
Anna Menon. Born on December 24, 1985, in Houston, Texas, she earned a degree in mathematics and Spanish from Texas Christian University and a degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University. She worked at NASA as a biomedical controller assisting crews of the International Space Station and then went to work at SpaceX, where she’s a mission director.
Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis are scheduled to conduct the first spacewalk on a private mission. New spacesuits were developed specifically for this type of activity and will be worn by the entire crew because the Crew Dragon doesn’t have an airlock, so the entire Resilience will be decompressed.
The spacewalk will not be the only record of the Polaris Dawn mission, as the planned orbit is highly elliptical and should take Crew Dragon Resilience to an altitude of about 1,400 kilometers. This will take it inside the Van Allen belts and allow for studies on the effects of the magnetosphere on human physiology.
