SpaceX Polaris Dawn’s mission concludes on a positive note.
On 10 September 2024, the 14th crewed orbital flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft began, as another attempt at humanity's pursuit of the stars. Led by Shift4 CEO Jared Isaacman, along with his crew of three—Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon—they traveled into an elliptical orbit, reaching 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) away from Earth. Menon and Gillis flew farther from Earth than any women before them. The crew traveled through parts of the Van Allen radiation belt to study how space radiation and spaceflight affect the human body. Later, they conducted the first-ever commercial spacewalk in history, that too from a Dragon spacecraft. Sarah Gillis became the youngest person ever to participate in a spacewalk at 30 years old.
870 miles above the Earth’s surface. That's a stratospheric leap beyond the International Space Station's usual 250-mile orbit, catapulting Polaris Dawn to the highest point humans have ventured from Earth since the Apollo missions.
During the five-day trip, the crew conducted almost 40 experiments to study how space influences human health. A new record was set for the number of people exposed to the vacuum of space simultaneously (four).
“It’s an opportunity to see what kind of [radiation] exposure that we get as they get further and further away from the surface of the Earth.”
Jimmy Wu, deputy director at Baylor’s Translational Research Institute for Space Health, told The Verge. “We talk about the concepts of health equity and being able to serve underserved low resource environments,” Wu said. “If you can keep someone healthy in the remoteness of space, you should be able to do that anywhere on Earth.”
The Polaris Dawn mission was the first of three Polaris missions planned by Jared Isaacman and SpaceX. There will also be the first manned flight of the new SpaceX rocket Starship, which is still in development.
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