Science
Polaris Dawn Astronauts aboard SpaceX Dragon achieve highest orbit ever around Earth
After launching early on Tuesday, the billionaire Jared Isaacman and his crew traveled to altitudes not visited by any astronaut since the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and ’70s.
Updated 2024-Oct-07 00:34
A view of Earth against the blackness of space with an area of spacecraft in the foreground.
The crew will spend approximately two hours on the whole operation. Before and after the spacewalk they will carry out around 40 experiments such as taking M.S of the astronauts brains and attempting to capture X ray images using radiation from outer space.
On Tuesday the crew dedicated about three and a half hours to these research tasks as reported on the mission s X social platform account in the evening.
This involved testing communication with Earth using SpaceX s Starlink system. The project is also fundraising for St.
Jude Children s Research Hospital in Memphis. Menon will continue to stay in the capsule monitoring the screens and taking care of the umbilical cords that supply air power and other essentials to the astronauts.
Gillis reenter and seal the hatch the capsule will be repressurized. The astronauts from Polaris Dawn are Anna Menon Scott Kidd Poteet Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis as shown in the image.
The four conducted science experiments in space on Tuesday after liftoff with only Mr. Gillis exiting the capsule for the walk.
Four private astronauts aboard an ambitious space mission led by a billionaire entrepreneur traveled farther from Earth on Tuesday than any other human being in more than half a century.
Two of them Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon have now gone farther from the planet than any other women ever.
The mission named Polaris Dawn lifted off through a break of favorable weather before sunrise on Tuesday.
The flight had been grounded for nearly two weeks by unsettled weather in and around Florida. The astronauts flying an elliptical path around Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule looped outward as far out as 755 miles above the planet’s surface.
The mission’s orbits were carefully planned to reduce the hit of radiation the crew would absorb and to minimize the chances of being struck by tiny bits of rock crisscrossing the solar system.
The journey on Tuesday was only a small fraction of the nearly quarter million miles that NASA’s Apollo astronauts traveled to the moon.
But after the last mission going there in 1972 humanity has stayed close to our planet not venturing beyond orbits a few hundred miles up.
The Polaris Dawn mission led by Jared Isaacman founder of the payment services company Shift4 is a collaboration with SpaceX the rocket company founded by Elon Musk.
It is the first of three missions designed to spur technological advances needed for Mr. Musk’s ambition to send people to Mars eventually.
That includes the mission’s most daring moment scheduled for Thursday: a spacewalk. On Tuesday after 8 p.M. Eastern time the spacecraft performed a maneuver to add some bragging rights.
SpaceX Agence France Presse Getty ImagesMr. Menon will stay in the spacecraft to oversee the umbilical cords and monitor the readings to ensure everything is progressing correctly.
The primary objective of the spacewalk is to evaluate the spacesuits that SpaceX designed for this mission.
The spacesuits have evolved from previous SpaceX missions now offering added features such as safeguarding against micrometeroids and regulating temperatures for the astronauts.
Once it reaches the high orbit the spacecraft will use another thruster to move to a lower orbit allowing the crew to get ready for the spacewalk.
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