Polaris Dawn Mission:
It aims to revolutionise commercial spaceflight with a high-orbit mission and the first-ever private spacewalk by non-professional astronauts.
- Polaris Dawn Mission will be the first non-governmental mission to conduct a spacewalk, reaching an unprecedented altitude of approximately 700 kilometres (435 miles) above Earth.
- It will also orbit Earth through regions of a highly-charged belt of radiation. There are two of these “Van Allen Belts”, an inner and an outer one.
- This altitude surpasses that of the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits at about 400 kilometres.
- SpaceX will provide the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for the mission.
- The spacecraft will attempt to break the altitude record set by NASA’s Gemini 11 mission in 1966, which reached 1,373 kilometres
- It is spearheaded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who previously financed and flew on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission, the first civilian mission to orbit Earth.
