SpaceX launches all-civilian Polaris mission to orbit

A SpaceX capsule carrying four private citizens blasted off on a five-day mission that is set to include the first spacewalk carried out by an all-civilian crew.

A SpaceX capsule carrying four private citizens blasted off early Tuesday on a five-day mission that is set to include the first spacewalk carried out by an all-civilian crew.

The mission, known as Polaris Dawn, lifted off at 5:24 a.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

The journey is designed to carry the four crew members to the highest orbital altitude that humans have reached since the final Apollo moon mission in 1972: 870 miles above Earth’s surface. That’s more than three times higher than the International Space Station.

While in space, the group will test new spacesuits and technologies that could pave the way for future long-duration missions to the moon and eventually Mars.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Tuesday. Chandan Khanna / AFP - Getty ImagesThe four-person crew is made up of billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of the payment processing company Shift4; retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet; and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. Isaacman, who funded and took part in the first all-civilian SpaceX mission to orbit in 2021, is bankrolling the Polaris Dawn mission in partnership with SpaceX.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-launches-private-mission-civilian-spacewalk-rcna168436

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