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First private spacewalk a success! What the SpaceX mission means for science

The Polaris Dawn crew are testing a new spacesuit design and running 36 experiments while orbiting Earth.
  1. Michael Greshko
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Polaris Dawn, the private SpaceX mission currently orbiting Earth, has already set several records since its launch on 10 September. Hours after taking off, the mission’s Crew Dragon spacecraft reached an altitude of 1,400 kilometres, the highest orbit above Earth achieved by a crewed spacecraft and the farthest humans have travelled from Earth since NASA’s Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. And earlier today, two of its crew, US entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk at a peak altitude of more than 700 kilometres.

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Nature 633, 504-505 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02855-y

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 12 September 2024: An earlier version of this story said that in the opening image entrepreneur Jared Isaacman is shown climbing from the spacecraft hatch. It is SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis.

References

  1. Gabel, L. et al. Sci. Rep. 12, 9446 (2022).

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