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After five eventful days in space, including the first commercial spacewalk, Polaris Dawn’s private astronaut crew is returning to Earth.
If all goes according to plan, the SpaceX Dragon capsule Resilience – which has been carrying the four-person space shuttle for the past five days – will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, on October 1, 2018. Sunday, September 15at about 3:36 a.m. EDT (07:36 a.m. GMT), SpaceX announced this in an update. The landing marks the end of Polaris Dawn, a mission to demonstrate the mobility and functionality of SpaceX’s new EVA spacesuit, and the completion of the first spacewalk by a private citizen in history.
Coverage of Polaris Dawn’s return begins about an hour before landing at 2:36 a.m. EDT (06:36 GMT) and will be available on SpaceX’s X-Account Page and on the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission page.
Polaris Dawn launched early Tuesday (Sept. 10) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Leading (and funding) the mission is billionaire philanthropist Jared Isaacman. Isaacman also led SpaceX’s Inspiration4 in 2021, the first all-civilian flight into space, which also flew on SpaceX’s Resilience Dragon capsule. This time, Isaacman was joined by mission pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, as mission specialists.
Related: SpaceX Polaris Dawn astronauts perform historic first private spacewalk in orbit (video)
As with the Inspiration4 mission, Polaris Dawn raised money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Inspiration4 raised over $250 million.
Aboard Resilience, the crew flew through parts of the Van Allen radiation belt during the first days of the mission, reaching distances of up to 1,400 kilometers from Earth – an altitude never before reached by a woman. This made Gillis and Menon the farthest-flown female astronauts in history and farther than any other manned mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.
In their high elliptical orbit, the Polaris Dawn crew conducted several experiments to study the effects of the novel microgravity environment on the human body before reducing their altitude in preparation for the most important demonstration of their mission – their historic spacewalk.
The Polaris Dawn spacewalk occurred on the third day of the crew’s mission and lasted about two hours. Isaacman and Gillis took turns floating through Crew Dragon’s upper hatch and performed a series of mobility tests to test SpaceX’s new spacesuits. Using a specially designed mobility grip structure dubbed “Skywalker” by SpaceX engineers, Isaacman and Gillis each spent several minutes, mostly outside Dragon’s hatch, enjoying the view of Earth below as they performed their EVA suit checks.
In addition to their spacewalk and other experiments, the Polaris Dawn crew reached another milestone by using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network to send data and content from orbit. Despite their busy schedules, the crew was able to post on social media and send videos, photos, tributes and even a musical performance back to Earth.
On Saturday (Sept. 14), they spoke directly to SpaceX employees and guests via a Starlink video link during a 40-minute space-to-Earth call that appeared to go smoothly. There were no connectivity issues even as their Dragon capsule fired its engines 16 times, SpaceX said in an X update.
SIMILAR STORIES:
— Polaris Dawn Mission: Meet the Crew Taking the First Commercial Spacewalk
— SpaceX sends Polaris Dawn astronauts into space to attempt world’s first private spacewalk (video)
— How SpaceX modified a Dragon crew capsule for Polaris Dawn’s historic private spacewalk
The crew’s launch into space was originally scheduled for August 26, but was delayed by several days due to weather conditions at the mission’s landing zones.
With only limited supplies on board for the five days in orbit and no opportunity to rendezvous with another spacecraft, such as the International Space Station, favorable conditions for recovering Polaris Dawn after splashdown are critical.
