Mere months after Jared Isakman made history commanding the first all private

spaceflight, Inspiration 4, the Shift 4 founder and CEO announced a new even

more ambitious plan, a partnership with SpaceX called

the Polaris Program. In February of 2022, on the debut episode of Manifest Space, he

unveiled it. What the players program is, is a series of tech demonstration missions,

building blocks, if you will, that will culminate in the first flight,

or first crew flight of Starship. Now our first mission is

called Polaris Dawn and that will launch later this year and it has a number of really

ambitious objectives so we're going to go you know

farther into space than any any human being is gone since we last walked on the moon

we're going to do a EBA or a spacewalk testing a new generation spacesuit. And we're going to communicate over

lasers using the Starling satellite constellation. And then we have a bunch of research and

science that's stacked in between the five day

duration of our mission. Two and a half years later after thousands of hours of

training including flying fighter jets and working through dragon capsule simulations, Polaris Dawn is finally a go,

scheduled to lift off from Kennedy Space Center as soon as August 26th.

The crew, Isaacman is the commander, Scott Kid Potit is mission pilot, and Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both SpaceX engineers, are mission specialists.

Polaris Dawn will fly farther into space than any human since the Apollo era,

orbiting Earth three times higher than the International Space Station.

They will make history and brand new spacesuits conducting the first ever private

space walk, and all of it with an

earthly mission of raising money for St. Jude Children's Hospital.

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