PRIVATE CITIZENS CONDUCTING ORBITAL EXPERIMENTS
SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn human spaceflight mission is seeking to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown, but it’s going to be just as notable for who will be on board. Billionaire Jared Isaacman, Anna Menon, Scott Poteet and Sarah Gillis are private citizens set to complete the first-ever commercial spacewalk. They will lift off in a Crew Dragon capsule atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and reach an initial apogee of 1,400 kilometres (870 miles). They’ll perform the spacewalk at an altitude of 700 kilometres (435 miles) and conduct 38 science and research experiments during the five-day mission. Each is designed to learn more about the human body on both Earth and in space.