SpaceX said it would fly another set of tourist missions designed to prove out the company’s capabilities in orbit, including testing out the company’s space suit with the first commercial spacewalk.
The program, called Polaris, is still not set in stone, with no launch date set. But the broad outlines are to mount as many as three crewed flights of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon space capsule. The earliest launch, dubbed Polaris Dawn, could come at the end of 2022.
The missions will be lead and funded by Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of the payments company Shift4. Isaacman also paid for the Inspiration4 mission in 2021, when he and three other private individuals flew on a three day mission orbiting the earth in the Dragon in SpaceX’s first space tourism mission.
That flight was something of a shakedown cruise, demonstrating that SpaceX could loft anyone to orbit, and helping the company clean up some minor issues, like a leaky onboard toilet. It also raised $240 million for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, Quartz reported.
