New York: SpaceX launched a new fully-commercial human spaceflight mission on Tuesday, featuring the first-ever commercial spacewalk.
The Dragon spacecraft carrying four civilian astronauts lifted off at 5:23 a.m. Eastern Time Tuesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn, is the first human spaceflight for the crew, consisting of Mission Pilot Kidd Poteet, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon.
It is the 14th human spaceflight mission of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. The mission is headed for an altitude three times higher than the International Space Station, the furthest that humans have been from Earth in over half a century, according to Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX.
The crew is preparing for the first-ever commercial spacewalk scheduled on Thursday, Sept. 12.
The crew will also conduct science during their multi-day mission to orbit, including essential health and human performance research for NASA’s Human Research Program.
The research will help NASA scientists better understand how exposure to space conditions affects the human body. The crew will test new medical approaches and technology on telemedicine capabilities, gather data on space motion sickness, and better characterize flight-associated injury risks, according to NASA.
