Four team members embark on their journey for the inaugural privately-financed SpaceX extravehicular activity.
A group of four individuals are set to embark on a space voyage with SpaceX within the week, marking the inaugural privately financed spacewalk. The billionaire entrepreneur and mission leader, Jared Isaacman, has been readying for the five-day "Polaris Dawn" expedition alongside his teammates for nearly three years, as he announced at a press conference on Monday (local time).
Isaacman is bankrolling the "Polaris" project, comprising three missions in collaboration with SpaceX, the private aerospace company started by business magnate Elon Musk. Musk hailed the spacewalk as being "legendary" on the digital platform X.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is slated to send the Dragon capsule carrying the four astronauts blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at the crack of dawn next Monday. Besides Isaacman and pilot Scott Poteet, two SpaceX staff members will be accompanying the team: Sarah Gillis is in charge of astronaut training at SpaceX, while Anna Menon previously worked for the American space agency, NASA.
Isaacman had previously participated in SpaceX's debut space tourism trip in 2021. He had rented a rocket and a Dragon spacecraft for the journey and spent three days in Earth orbit alongside three other companions.
The group has endured rigorous training for the forthcoming "Polaris Dawn" voyage, including 2000 hours in a flight simulator, stints in a centrifuge, scuba diving, parachuting jumps, and a summit climb of the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador.
During the "Polaris Dawn" expedition, Jared Isaacman and his team, including Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, are set to conduct a SpaceX spacewalk. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, described this spacewalk as "legendary."
