On the morning of September 10, the Crew Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX, carrying four private astronauts, was launched into space, initiating the daring Polaris Dawn mission.
The crew took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This marks the most ambitious private mission of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The crew of the Polaris Dawn program from left to right: Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, and Sarah Gillis. (Photo: SpaceX)
After a few minutes in space, the spacecraft will enter an elliptical orbit around Earth, with a closest distance of 190 km and a farthest distance of 1,400 km—marking the farthest humans have ventured since the conclusion of NASA’s Apollo Moon program in 1972.
The crew includes entrepreneur billionaire Jared Isaacman, a retired fighter pilot, and two SpaceX staff members.
In the Polaris Dawn program, billionaire Isaacman directly selected three companions to join him.
The billionaire, who is also the CEO of Shift4, a payment technology company, was previously a jet pilot and has a passion for space exploration.
He ventured into the realm of space travel and partnered with SpaceX in 2021 by launching the Inspiration4 mission—a 3-day journey into space featuring a cancer survivor, a data engineer, and an artist. This mission was designed to demonstrate that individuals from all walks of life can be trained to undertake orbital flights.
Later, Isaacman was inspired to pursue bolder achievements in space. In an interview with CNN, he expressed that part of his dream to take everyday people for spacewalks stems from SpaceX’s founding mission: to make humanity a multi-planetary species, paving the way for a future where humans live and work on Mars or other planets.
Isaacman stated that this is why he collaborated with SpaceX to establish the Polaris Program. The goal of the Polaris Program is to develop and test the technologies necessary for establishing a settlement beyond Earth.
Launch of 4 astronauts into orbit on the morning of September 10. (Photo: SpaceX).
Besides billionaire Isaacman, former U.S. Air Force pilot Kidd Poteet and two SpaceX employees, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, are among the four crew members of the Polaris Dawn mission.
Former pilot Kidd Poteet has accompanied billionaire Isaacman throughout his journey in pursuit of space ambitions. Poteet served for 20 years in the Air Force, accumulating about 3,200 hours of flight experience.
He began working for Isaacman at Draken International—a supplier and contractor of tactical fighter aircraft for the U.S. military—after meeting the billionaire at an airshow.
As a pilot involved in numerous operational tests, Poteet possesses several professional skills similar to those of NASA’s professional astronauts.
The third member of Polaris Dawn is Sarah Gillis—a flight instructor. Gillis shared that she was shocked to learn she was selected for the Polaris team at the end of 2021.
As the lead operations engineer at SpaceX, Gillis has been responsible for training astronauts for critical missions. Among her trainees were the first astronauts to fly aboard Crew Dragon—Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley of NASA during the historic Demo-2 mission in 2020.
She also trained billionaire Jared Isaacman for his first mission into space in 2021.
In nearly a decade at SpaceX, Gillis has helped develop the operational processes for Crew Dragon and has closely supported the company’s spaceflight missions.
The final member of Polaris Dawn is Anna Menon—a SpaceX engineer who will serve as the medical officer for this mission. A space enthusiast, Menon has always hoped to have the opportunity to embark on an adventure beyond Earth.
Menon holds a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University and has spent 7 years at NASA as a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station (ISS).
After transitioning to SpaceX, Menon took on the responsibility of overseeing spaceflights, with her most notable mission being Demo-2 in 2020—the flight of Crew Dragon that brought astronauts back to the U.S. for the first time in a decade.
