Billionaire Finally Launches on First Private Space-Walk Mission

Anna Menon, Polaris Dawn mission specialist and medical officer, during training in Hawthorne, California.Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff; Mark Abramson/Getty

One of the most ambitious space tourism missions in history has launched, with the all-commercial crew set to hit a number of milestones during its five days in space, including the first-ever privately funded human space walk.

The mission, called Polaris Dawn, took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today, Tuesday, September 10, at 5.23 am Eastern Time. The four-person crew, traveling inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle atop one of the California company’s Falcon 9 rockets, comprises Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who funded the mission, SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, and pilot Scott Poteet.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, says the mission’s pioneering space walk is a “gimmick” in some respects. “But if you look at ...