At the age of 41, he has his own Wikipedia page. He's rich, so he has the money to do what he's always wanted to do: be an astronaut. Jared Isaacson started his own successful companies, and funded and organized the mission called Polaris Dawn.
Four civilians (photo) launched last Tuesday, but not for NASA or any other national space program. SpaceX took them 870 miles into space where Jared and SpaceX engineer Sara Gillis did an EVA (extravehicular activity), the first ever for civilians.
Their "spacewalk" didn't involve a tether, but rather they kept in contact with their vehicle, Crew Dragon Resilience, the whole time. Just for this mission, a new hatch called "Skywalker" replaced the capsule's normal ISS docking port to enable the EVA.
They tested their spacesuits and Starlink laser-based communications, conducted over 30 science experiments, and returned to Earth safely yesterday. Two more Polaris Project missions will follow.
from Space
(cont'd tomorrow, the EVA and the spacesuits)
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