Polaris Dawn, the private SpaceX mission that currently circles the earth, has already set several records since its start on September 10th. Only hours after the start, the Mission crew shipping ship reached a height of 1,400 kilometers, the highest orbit above the earth, which was ever reached by a manned spaceship. This is the longest distance that people have covered from Earth since NASA's Apollo missions at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s. Today, two members of the crew, the US entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, have completed the first commercial space walk at an altitude of over 700 kilometers.

"There is a lot to do at home, but from here the earth really looks like a perfect world," said Isaacman, while he was protruding with the head and upper body from the hacth of the spaceship and prepared for his space walking maneuvers.

Although these milestones are impressive, for scientists who have spoken to Nature , it is even more fascinating what the mission could mean for the future of space research. With Private citizens and flights that are increasingly flying into space , there will be more opportunities to carry out experiments in microgravity and to explore the limits of human space.

"It is probably the most exciting time in space since the 1960s," says Christopher Mason, a geneticist at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, who heads the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA), an important archive for biomedical data from astronauts. "Now we have space suits, spaceships and a mission that all come from a private company, SpaceX, which is really the first time that we have all of this regardless of an organization in space travel."

space mechanics

The ability of civilians to complete a space walk could even mean more options for repairing scientific devices in space. In 2022, Isaacman proposed that NASA should use a manned SpaceX mission to bring the agency of the agency to a higher orbit in order to extend its lifespan. The telescope has been in space for 34 years and will gradually descend until it burns in the earth's atmosphere. NASA temporarily rejected the proposal and pointed out the potentially catastrophic risks for both Hubble and the crew.

But with the success of today's space walk - also known as extravehicular activity (EVA) - the idea that a private company carries out such difficult spatial operations has become much more plausible. "If Polaris Dawn is completely successful with her commercial Eva, it will be a step forward, and it could be that this is sufficient to convince NASA," says Laura Forczyk, managing director of the space-road consulting company Astralytical in Atlanta, Georgia.

The four members of the polaris dawn crew at Kennedy Space Center.

In the meantime, Polaris Dawn will deliver scientific results after it ends up in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean in the coming days. The mission's crew dragon spaceship, which is called Resilience , transports 36 experiments that were contributed by 31 different institutions from Canada, Saudi Arabia and the USA, many of which concentrate on the health of space drivers. "We can learn a lot," said Isaacman at a press conference on August 19. "If one day we get to Mars, we would like to be able to return and be healthy enough to report about it."

more crews, more data

Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned polaris missions, which is financed and managed by Isaacman, the managing director of the payment processing company Shift4 based in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. One goal of the Polaris program is to promote the ambitions of the manned space travel of the company SpaceX based in Hawthornia, California. The third Polaris mission becomes the first manned flight of SpaceX’s Starship , a fully reusable mega rocket that NASA in the coming years for the transport of astronauts as part of ambitious Artemis program has planned.

Before all of this, Polaris Dawn tests some basic aspects. On the one hand, SpaceX’s Eva suit, the company's first suit that was developed to protect people from the vacuum of space. Gillis and Isaacman wore the suits during their space walk. "It has not missed us," said Isaacman at the press conference on August 19 that "at some point someone could wear a version" of the suit during a Mars walk.

In addition, the mission examines the health of the crew members on board. "The space travel is simply a huge stress factor," says Jimmy Wu, the deputy director of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (Trish) at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, the medical data of commercial space travelers, including the Polaris DAWN crew.

researchers believe that private manned space flights will provide faster answers to how space travel affects health than state -guided missions with trained astronauts as they take off more often. "It is really difficult to study astronauts because it takes so long to get 10 or 12 of them through six months of missions," says Leigh Gabel, a kinesiologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, who examines the effects of microgravity on bone health. "Private space travel could give us a real lead."

How the body can cope with space

Gabes team will take high-resolution X-rays of the wrists and ankles of the Polaris Dawn crew as soon as they return to earth to measure the effects of several days of microgravity on the bone substance. Their previous work with astronauts who spent time on the international space station showed that months in microgravity can weaken the inner structure of load-bearing bones, such as those in the legs, so that they do not completely recover a year after returning to earth. Data track label = "Go to Reference" Data Track Category = "References"> 1

Several researchers use Polaris Dawn to better understand what happens to the space-based neuro-O-Ocular syndrome (sans), a state in which astronauts experience permanent changes-and even damage-in their eyesight. Scientists suspect that sans of accumulated liquid comes in mind, which would normally drain in earth's education. In collaboration with the ophthalmologist Prem Subramanian and the space-healthy research researcher Allie Hayman from the University of Colorado Boulder, the members of the Polaris Dawn-Crew each have an "intelligent" contact lens that can record the fluid pressure in mind.

Other researchers will examine the effects of exposure to space radiation-high-energy charged particles-on the body by analyzing DNA, RNA and other Biosamples of the Polaris Dawn crew. It is important that Polaris Dawn is for the first time that many of these analyzes are carried out over two different missions for the same space: Isaacman also took part in the research of Soma and Trish when he commanded Inspiration4, a purely civil orbital mission that was operated by SpaceX in 2021.

Isaacman is "one of the best characterized people who have ever existed," says Mason. "He is the best chance we have to understand what happens to the body before you go into space, and then what happens to the body, every time you go into space."