Aria Alamalhodaei, writing at TechCrunch:
After a nearly three-year interlude, Jared Isaacman is returning to space. The billionaire entrepreneur first went to orbit as part of the Inspiration4 mission, which made history for having a crew comprised entirely of private citizens, not professional astronauts. But with this next mission, Polaris Dawn, he and mission partner SpaceX have set their sights even higher.
Literally: Polaris Dawn will fly farther than any mission using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to date, while also soaring through portions of the Van Allen radiation belt for the first time since the days of the Apollo missions.
Even more daringly, when the four-person crew reaches around 700 kilometers (435 miles) above Earth, they’ll attempt the first-ever commercial spacewalk — testing Dragon’s ability to support extravehicular activities (EVAs) and giving SpaceX’s EVA suits a spin for the very first time.
I got to speak to the Polaris Dawn crew during last year’s Podcastathon, and really enjoyed the conversation. I cannot wait to see them succeed on their flight.