On Tuesday morning, billionaire Jared Isaacman will make history once again as he embarks on his second space journey, this time with SpaceX. The Polaris Dawn mission, set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, promises to be a groundbreaking venture in the annals of space exploration. Scheduled to lift off during a four-hour window beginning at 3:38 a.m. EDT, this mission will mark the first-ever commercial spacewalk in history, pushing the boundaries of private space travel and technology.
Jared Isaacman, 41, a self-made billionaire and founder of Shift4 Payments, has a background as ambitious and varied as his space endeavors. Isaacman, who started his payment processing company at age 16 in his parents’ New Jersey basement, has seen Shift4 Payments grow into a titan in the financial tech industry. His company now processes over $260 billion in transactions annually and serves major clients such as Hilton, Four Seasons, KFC, and Arby’s.
Isaacman’s passion for aviation has been a prominent feature of his life. He has set records flying around the world in a light jet and founded Draken International, which boasts the world’s largest private fleet of military jets. Following a lucrative sale of his majority stake in Draken to Blackstone in 2019, Isaacman’s fortune expanded significantly when Shift4 Payments went public the next year.
The Polaris Dawn mission is not just a personal milestone for Isaacman but also a significant leap for commercial space travel. Aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, Isaacman and his crew, including former Air Force pilot Scott Poteet and SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, will embark on a five-day mission to the highest Earth orbit ever achieved since the Apollo era.
One of the most anticipated features of this mission is its first-ever private spacewalk. On the third day of the mission, Isaacman and Gillis will spend approximately 15 minutes outside the spacecraft to test SpaceX’s new extra-vehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits. These suits are designed to be more flexible and cost-effective, a crucial step towards making spacewalks more accessible for private missions. The astronauts will be tethered to the spacecraft by 12-foot-long umbilical cords, which will supply them with oxygen.
In addition to the spacewalk, the Polaris Dawn mission will venture through Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, where the crew will face high levels of radiation. This leg of the mission will include an experiment to explore whether space radiation can be used to take X-ray images without traditional X-ray machinery, potentially advancing our understanding of space-based imaging.
This mission, the first of three planned Polaris missions, is a testament to Isaacman’s dedication to advancing space technology. His first trip to space was in 2021 aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon during the Inspiration4 mission, a groundbreaking flight that was the first space mission exclusively populated by private individuals. That mission, a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, paved the way for further commercial space exploration.
As Polaris Dawn ascends to an altitude of 870 miles from Earth, it will not only extend the boundaries of human spaceflight but also set a new benchmark for the capabilities of private space missions. Isaacman’s ambitious journey exemplifies the rapidly evolving landscape of commercial space exploration, with SpaceX at the forefront of this new era.
The eyes of the world will be on Kennedy Space Center as the Falcon 9 rocket lifts off, marking the beginning of what promises to be a historic chapter in the story of space travel.
