The astronauts Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon have become this Wednesday humans who have orbited the Earth at the highest altitudeThey did it 1,400.7 kilometers from the sea surface and it is the furthest that an astronaut has been from Earth. since the end of the program Apollo in 1972.
The mission record Polaris Dawn exceeds that achieved by astronauts Charles Conrad and Richard F. Gordon Jr. in 1966. Then the ship Gemini 11 reached an orbit of 1,368 kilometers. After surpassing the previous NASA mission, Gillis and Menon have also become the first SpaceX employees to travel to space and in the two women who have traveled the furthest from Earth.
The Polaris Dawn mission is private and is Commanded and financed by billionaire Isaacman. It is his second flight into space and is part of the three he contracted with SpaceX in 2022. The space capsule Resilience took off propelled by a Falcon 9 of the company this Tuesday for a mission that is expected to last 5 days, The return will take place next Sunday. Resilience is a ship Crew Dragon SpaceX’s mission-specific mission and the first manned spacecraft to communicate from space via the SpaceX satellite network. Starlink.
Polaris Dawn and Dragon at 1,400 km above Earth – the farthest humans have traveled since the Apollo program over 50 years ago pic.twitter.com/rRDeD1dY1e
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 11, 2024
Polaris Dawn has also become the first private mission to cross the inner Van Allen radiation belts. These are two areas, high above the atmosphere, where large quantities of high-energy charged particles are concentrated. During the time that astronauts have spent in these areas, they will have received as much radiation as during a stay of several months on the International Space Station. During the orbits they made to reach 1,400 kilometers of altitude, the ship crossed the Van Allen Belt on several occasions. Another objective of the mission is to study How does this exhibition affect them?.
Polaris Dawn faces another historic challenge: the first private spacewalk. It is scheduled for early Thursday morning, although it could be delayed. All astronauts will experience the vacuum of space and Two of them will go outside the Resilienceattached to the ship by the umbilical cord of the New spacesuit designed by SpaceX.