The mission, named Polaris Dawn, hearkens back to the earliest era of space flight, the 1960s, when pioneers pushed the boundaries of what had been accomplished in space
Three years ago, a billionaire entrepreneur named Jared Isaacman made a groundbreaking trip to space. That space flight, which Isaacman called Inspiration4, was the first to orbit Earth without a professional astronaut aboard.
“There’s always a risk calculus to it,” Isaacman said in an interview a week and a half ago, before he and his three crewmates headed to Florida for the launch. “But the real focus is on what we stand to gain and learn from it. And in this case, we’ve got some pretty cool things.” The upside of the journey is that it will test new technologies and gather data on the effects it has on the human body when people venture deeper into space.
While Isaacman led and financed Inspiration4 – he essentially chartered a flight using a Falcon 9 rocket and a Crew Dragon capsule from SpaceX – Polaris Dawn and two subsequent missions are, in Isaacman’s words, a “joint effort” between Isaacman and SpaceX. Polaris Dawn will travel further from the planet that anyone since the Apollo moon landings ended more than 50 years ago. The first few orbits will pass through a dent in the Earth’s magnetic field known as the South Atlantic Anomaly; this magnetic weak spot allows high-energy charged particles from regions known as the Van Allen belts to come much closer to Earth’s surface.
After about six of these high orbits, the Crew Dragon will fire its thrusters again to drop the spacecraft down to a lower, elliptical orbit, with an apogee of 700 kilometres. When Isaacman first announced a series of three space missions in February 2022, he said Polaris Dawn would take place by the end of that year. But the date slipped repeatedly as SpaceX engineers studied how to make the flight as safe as possible.“At this point, there is no stone that they haven’t turned to make sure that we’re thinking about absolutely everything we can,” Gillis said.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Ron Coote inducted as 14th Immortal on NRL Hall of Fame nightA great of the 1960s and 70s has joined the most prestigious group in rugby league.
Read more »
Ron Coote inducted as 14th Immortal on NRL Hall of Fame nightA great of the 1960s and 70s has joined the most prestigious group in rugby league.
Read more »
Ron Coote inducted as 14th Immortal on NRL Hall of Fame nightA great of the 1960s and 70s has joined the most prestigious group in rugby league.
Read more »
Israel strikes on Gaza school site kill almost 100, Palestinian officials sayCompound where about 6,000 displaced people were sheltering hit as many prepared for dawn prayers
Read more »
'I know it was you': Cross River Rail worker blames CFMEU for pre-dawn assault9News has obtained exclusive vision of a Cross River Rail worker being assaulted outside his home as he prepares to go to work.
Read more »
Half a billion children live in areas with twice as many very hot days as in 1960sUnicef analysis also finds children in eight countries spend more than half the year in temperatures above 35C
Read more »