American billionaire to conduct first private spacewalk

A historic turning point. The Polaris Dawn crew arrived in Florida on Monday, August 19, ahead of liftoff from Kennedy Space Center on Monday, August 26. The mission is set to allow, for the first time, an ordinary person to venture into space.

Polaris Dawn, announced in 2022, is the first of three missions in the Polaris program funded by Jared Isaacman in partnership with SpaceX. The American billionaire, founder of United Bank Card and Draken International, loves a challenge. An avid pilot, in 2009 he set the record for flying around the world in a plane after a flight that lasted about 62 hours.

In 2021, he became commander of the Inspiration4 mission, the first flight to carry only non-professional astronauts, spending three days in orbit around Earth.

Accompanied by Sarah Gillis, Anna Menon, two SpaceX employees, and one of his close friends, pilot Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman will once again be the commander of Polaris Dawn.

Altitude 1400 km

The Crew Dragon capsule is expected to travel to an altitude of 1,400 kilometers, the farthest a crew has been since the end of the Apollo program in the 1970s. By comparison, the International Space Station is much closer to Earth, at 100 kilometers away and 400 kilometers high.

The mission is intended to test new technologies, including new suits, needed to enable SpaceX to carry humans further into space. About forty experiments will also be conducted.

Very quickly after entering space, the crew will prepare for Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis to emerge from the spacecraft. Since the capsule has no airlock for exit, all crew members will be exposed to the vacuum of space.

Intensive training

If all goes well, the crew should only have a short flight. “We have five or six days – maybe we can extend this period – to stay on board the car.”Jared Isaacman told CNN. “So we have to be really sure that we can fault-tolerant and replicate our systems and weather to get back to Earth after landing.”He added.

The four adventurers underwent intensive training: 2,000 hours in the simulator, diving, skydiving and even climbing a volcano in Ecuador… “This was one of the hardest workouts I've ever done.”“It’s a very good idea,” said Scott Poteet, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot.

This mission, while historic, is only the first step in a larger project that should for the first time send a crew inside the spacecraft, a super reusable rocket.