Billionaire Jared Isaacman's Polaris Dawn Project to Launch in July with First Private Spacewalk

TapTechNews July 4th news, the private space flight project Polaris Dawn funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman announced that it will be launched as early as July 31st.

The project plans to use the spacesuit tailored by SpaceX for the team and the Crew Dragon spaceship to carry out the first private spacewalk in history task, and a series of experiments will also be conducted.

According to the plan, the Polaris Dawn will fly to an altitude of about 700 kilometers (about 435 miles) from the earth, which is also the highest altitude reached by a manned mission since the Apollo moon landing mission in the 1960s. TapTechNews note: The orbital altitude of the International Space Station is about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles).

The Polaris Dawn is the first of the three missions in the Polaris Program, and all three missions are funded and commanded by Isaacman.

It is worth mentioning that Isaacman is also the funder and commander of the all-civilian spaceflight mission Inspiration4 in September 2021. This mission raised $250 million (TapTechNews note: currently about 1.822 billion RMB) for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee, and he plans to continue this charity through the Polaris Program.

In addition to Isaacman, the mission team members also include retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott Kidd Poteet as the pilot, and SpaceX operations engineer Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon as the mission specialists.

The official also said that due to the complexity of this mission, the Polaris Dawn, which was originally planned to be launched at the end of 2022, has been postponed until now. The most recent major postponement occurred in February 2024, postponing the mission originally scheduled for April to summer, and now the launch time has just been determined.