Four astronauts on Polaris Dawn flight return to Earth after 1st commercial spacewalk

Polaris Dawn — a daring private mission to space — ended successfully for its four astronauts with a pre-dawn Sunday splashdown near the Dry Tortugas off the Florida coast.

The five-day trip, funded by billionaire internet entrepreneur Jared Isaacman in which he served as the mission commander, broke several records including the first-ever commercial spacewalk using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.

Isaacman, along with fellow astronaut Sarah Gillis, took turns spending about 20 minutes each outside the capsule taking in the view and testing new spacesuits on Thursday.

It was the centerpiece of the mission, which also set the highest-ever Earth orbit by humans: 874 miles above the surface, eclipsing the record set by Gemini 11 in 1966 (and more than three times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station). The last time humans were this far from the planet was during the Apollo lunar program more than a half-century ago.

This mission was also the first time SpaceX had its own employees on a flight. Gillis is a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX and responsible for overseeing the company’s astronaut training program. She was joined by engineer Anna Menon who manages development of crew operations at SpaceX. The fourth crewmember, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, is a retired Air Force pilot who works with Isaacman.

This trip to space is the first of three flights Isaacman purchased under the Polaris Program. He previously spent three days in orbit in 2021 aboard this same SpaceX capsule on the Inspiration4 mission. He also paid for that flight and donated three seats as a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.

Polaris Dawn is the 14th time SpaceX has sent humans into orbit.