Polaris Dawn reaches peak altitude, breaking long standing record

Early this morning, the Polaris Dawn mission reached 1,400 km above Earth’s surface. This marks the highest spaceflight since the Apollo missions and beats the records set during NASA’s Gemini program in the 1960s.

Polaris Dawn launched early Tuesday morning after being delayed for almost two weeks due to poor weather conditions. As expected, SpaceX‘s close-out crews operated efficiently and got the crew inside the Dragon spacecraft before waiting out a weather delay. Once launched, the Falcon 9 and Dragon performed flawlessly, and now the crew can begin their on-orbit work.

For their first day, the crew of Polaris Dawn, commanded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, ate their first meal in space, slept, and began the pre-breathing treatment needed before their spacewalk. For a first day, it was rather tame but their job is about to get a whole lot harder in the coming days.

Using Dragon’s forward thrusters, SpaceX raised the vehicle’s orbit to a new record height for any non-lunar bound human spaceflight, 1,400.7 km. The last time humans were this high around Earth was Apollo 17. Excluding the Apollo program, Gemini 11 was the last altitude record at 1,368 km, using the Agena Target Vehicle’s propulsion system to get them there.

SpaceX informed the crew of their new altitude milestone, Issacman returned with “We all look forward to our friends at the Artemis program to take us to even greater heights.”

This is what is different between the Polaris Program and other commercial spaceflight missions. Polaris is attempting to push SpaceX almost as much as NASA or itself is pushing them to do bigger and better things for human spaceflight. While some might see Polaris as an extravagant expense by a tech billionaire, it’s more set up like a private space program with its own goals and missions to explore space.

Next up for Polaris Dawn will be the lowering of its orbit. While being up that high is great for the headlines and photos, radiation levels are higher, so limiting exposure is key. The Dragon will lower itself to a “cruising altitude” of about 750 km, where the crew will begin preparations for the first commercial spacewalk in history.