Partnered with SpaceX, billionaire set for return spaceflight and historic spacewalk
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Billionaire Jared Isaacman hasn’t been to space 1,066 days. He has to wait at least seven more for his return, but this time he hopes to perform the first commercial tethered spacewalk in history.
The man who spearheaded the first all-commercial crew on the Inspiraiton4 mission in September 2021 is back with three new crewmates on the private mission Polaris Dawn, a five-day orbital mission that is the first of three more Isaacman plans partnered with SpaceX as part of the Polaris Program he announced in 2022.
The four will climb aboard the same spacecraft to took Isaacman to space the first time around, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience, and aim to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A in just under a week early Monday targeting 3:38 a.m. Eastern time liftoff during 3:33-7:15 a.m. launch window.
Isaacman, who made his fortune as the founder and CEO of credit-card-processing company Shift4 payments, takes the commander role for the mission. Taking the role of pilot is friend Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and demonstration pilot who flew with the Air Force Thunderbirds. The two mission specialists on the flight are both SpaceX employees: Sarah Gillis, who will join Isaacman on the spacewalk, and medical officer Anna Menon.
The quartet arrived with flair as five jets from Isaacman’s Polaris Ghost Squadron aerobatic team flew over the former shuttle landing facility at KSC a pair of times including performing a Delta burst maneuver above the runway before landing just before noon and taxiing to a nearby hangar to speak with media.
“We’re the four lucky ones that get to go on this ride,” Isaacman said. “But I can’t tell you how many teams have been working nonstop the last 21/2 years. … supporting that kind of bigger dreams that you know, maybe not in the not too distant future, humans are going to finally reach another planet.”
The Polaris Program is a joint effort between Isaacman and SpaceX. Cost sharing is not disclosed.
“The idea is to develop, test new technology and operations in furtherance of SpaceX’s bold vision to enable humankind to journey among the stars,” he said. That includes Elon Musk’s vision to eventually build a colony on Mars.
The program touts up to three flights with the final one tasked to be the first human spaceflight of SpaceX’s in-development Starship and Super Heavy.
NASA human spaceflight official and now SpaceX vice president of build and flight reliability Bill Gerstenmaier joined the Polaris Dawn crew for the news conference discussing the company’s push for innovation, which includes developing extravehicular activity spacesuits in under three years.
“This pace of development that we get to do at SpaceX is very much like the pace of development that was required back in the early Apollo days,” he said. “We’re getting a chance to do that again, where we’re really starting to push frontiers with the private sector and learning new things that we would not be able to learn by staying in the risk-free environment of here on Earth.”
The mission will send the Crew Dragon up to the an altitude much higher than previous flights – flying up to 870 miles above Earth on an elliptical orbit. The record for orbital altitude for a crewed mission was set In 1966, when NASA astronauts Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon flew on the Gemini 11 to 853 miles.
The spacecraft will then descend back to about 430 miles altitude where the one-hour spacewalk will happen. Isaacman and Gillis’ suits will be connected to the spacecraft the entire time with 12-foot-long tethers as each take turns outside in the vacuum of space. Poteet and Menon, though, will also have to be in the EVA spacesuits as Crew Dragon has no airlock, so its entire cabin will have no atmosphere.
The EVA suits have helmets with visors that include digital heads-up displays, allowing the wearer to know the suit’s pressure, temperature and relative humidity.
The final objective of the mission is to test laser-based communication using Starlink satellites, but the five days will also be filled with about 40 science experiments.
“It’s time to go out. It’s time to explore,” Gerstenmaier said. “It’s time to do these big things and move forward.”