Polaris Dawn mission launch: SpaceX sends 4 people, including a billionaire, on the most ambitious private human spaceflight yet

Menon, Gillis, Poteet, and Isaacman climbed aboard their Crew Dragon spaceship on Tuesday morning, atop a 15-story Falcon 9 rocket at a launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

At 5:23 a.m. ET, the Falcon’s engines roared and the rocket climbed toward a pitch-black sky.

“Each of you has trained tirelessly and prepared rigorously for this moment,” Frank Messina, SpaceX’s launch director, told the crew in a livestream.

“Remember that your courage lights the path for future explorers. We trust in your skills, your bravery, and your teamwork to carry out the mission that lies ahead,” he said.

Around 13 minutes after takeoff as the first booster stage separated, the livestream showed incredible views of the Earth.

High radiation and the first commercial spacewalk

Now settled into orbit, the Polaris Dawn crew has a five-day agenda packed with experiments and a bold spacewalk plan. It’s all geared toward paving the way for future human missions to Mars.

Future Mars-bound crews might also need to repair their spaceships on the monthslong journey to the red planet.

That’s why the crew is also set to conduct the first commercial space walk ever on Thursday, day three of the mission. During the spacewalk, the crew will crack open their Crew Dragon spaceship, exposing its entire interior to the vacuum of space. Thee crew is carrying new SpaceX spacesuits for the operation.

Spacewalks — or “extravehicular activities (EVAs),” as they’re known in the industry — are always risky. But having a spacesuit that works in the vacuum of space is “critical” for the path to Mars, said Abhi Tripathi, a former Dragon mission director at SpaceX.

“So I think this is a very calculated risk. I think of it as a stepping stone more than a risk, where they’re not going completely out there and doing something different,” Tripathi, who now directs mission operations at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, told Business Insider. “They’re adding on capabilities, they’re layering on capabilities.”

More missions to come, including Starship’s first crew

This is just the first mission of an entire Polaris program designed to layer on capabilities.

SpaceX and Isaacman haven’t announced details for the second mission yet, but the third mission is slated to be Starship’s first crewed flight.

That’s the mega-rocket as tall as the Statue of Liberty that SpaceX has been developing in Texas and that flew to space and back for the first time this year.

Starship is the vehicle that’s supposed to bring people and provisions to Musk’s planned city on Mars.

“I think SpaceX has been very clear to everyone what their future holds. They want to build a settlement on Mars,” Tripathi said. “That’s the whole reason the company exists.”