The crew of Polaris Dawn returned safely to Earth early Sunday morning, concluding the historic privately funded mission. The Dragon capsule carrying the mission’s four astronauts — Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon — touched down in the Gulf of Mexico around 3:30AM ET.
On Thursday, Isaacman and Gillis completed the first commercial spacewalk, taking turns leaving the spacecraft and performing a series of spacesuit mobility tests. And with this mission, Gillis and Menon have now traveled farther from Earth than any woman before them. Polaris reached a peak altitude of about 870 miles, which is also the farthest distance humans have flown since the Apollo program.
The crew also conducted a number of science experiments and was able to complete a 40-minute video call to Earth and transmit files in a key test of Starlink’s space communications capabilities. That included a video recorded during the mission of Gillis, an engineer and violinist, playing the violin in space. “A new era of commercial spaceflight is dawning, with much more to come,” Pole Star posted on X Sunday morning.
