Here’s why tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, former US Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon are going to orbit.
SpaceX’s latest attempt to push the cosmic boundaries is set to kick off this week with a mission called Polaris Dawn: a nail-biting, five-day trek to orbit with a crew of private astronauts traveling into Earth’s radiation belts and hoping to conduct the first commercial spacewalk. The mission is slated to take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida between 3:38 and 7:09 a.m. ET Tuesday — carrying four civilians on the daring excursion.
Just days before Menon learned she would join the Polaris Dawn crew, her husband — Anil Menon, who also worked with the Inspiration4 crew as a SpaceX employee — was selected as a NASA astronaut. “It was an absolute whirlwind of a week in our household,” Anna Menon said. “I called him up right after I got out of the meeting with Jared, and I just remember his reaction being extreme shock and such excitement — over the moon excited.
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