Written by Staff writer
A SpaceX Dragon capsule and its four-person crew safely splashed down off the Florida coast on the weekend after a five-day mission that included the world’s first commercial space walk.
The Dragon spacecraft, named Resilience, and the Polaris Dawn crew parachuted down at 3:36 a.m. EST on September 15, 2024, after launching from the Kennedy Space Center on September 10 and a re-entry that saw the spacecraft exposed to temperatures of 1,900 degrees Celsius.
The crew included Mission Pilot Kidd Poteet, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon, and Mission Commander Jared Isaacman. For all except Isaacman, it was their first time in space. Isaacman, a successful financier, financed the mission.
During their multi-day mission to orbit, Dragon and the crew reached 1,408.1 km, the highest Earth orbit ever flown since the Apollo program, and participated in the first-ever spacewalk from a Dragon spacecraft wearing SpaceX-developed EVA suits.
Gilles and Isaacman completed the one-hour and 46-minute spacewalk on September 12. It was the highest ever attempted and a make-or-break test of SpaceX’s new EVA suits.
The astronauts also conducted around three dozen research studies and experiments developed by 31 partner institutions designed to advance both human health on Earth and during long-duration spaceflight, and tested Starlink laser-based communications in space.
Nasa said the mission represented “a giant leap forward” for the commercial space industry.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned Polaris missions, a partnership between Isaacman and SpaceX. One of those missions will include the first crewed flight of the still-under-development SpaceX Starship rocket.
