The Polaris Dawn crew returned safely to Earth early Sunday morning, ending a historic privately funded mission. The Dragon capsule carrying the mission’s four astronauts — Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon — crashed into the Gulf of Mexico around 3:30AM ET.
On Thursday, Isaacman and Gillis completed the first commercial spaceflight, each taking the opportunity to exit the mission and conduct a series of spacesuit mobility tests. And with this mission, Gillis and Menon have now traveled further from Earth than any women before. Polaris reached altitude about 870 miles, which is also the farthest any human has reached since the Apollo program.
The team also performed a number of scientific experiments, and were able to complete a 40-minute video call to Earth and send files to a large-scale test of Starlink’s communication capabilities in space. That included a video recorded during the mission of Gillis, an engineer and violinist, playing the violin in space. “A new era of commercial aviation is beginning, with more to come,” Polaris wrote in X on Sunday morning.
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