Polaris Dawn mission: Meet the crew taking 1st commercial spacewalk (Image Credit: Space.com)
Polaris Dawn is aiming for the first civilian spacewalk on an ambitious mission launching no earlier than Aug. 26.
Four astronauts will fly to Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Polaris Dawn crewmembers will make the first private spacewalk and circle Earth at an altitude of 435 miles (700 kilometers), the highest altitude since the Apollo missions.
Polaris Dawn was funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who made his fortune by founding payment provider company Shift4. Isaacman commands Polaris Dawn and will be joined by three others: pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel; and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both of whom are SpaceX engineers.
Learn more about the crew members below.
Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman is commander of Polaris Dawn, and the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. It’s not his first trip to space, as he previously funded and commanded the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission that flew to Earth orbit in September 2021.
Polaris Dawn will be the first of three funded missions under the Polaris Program that Isaacman plans to bankroll and fly. “The second mission will build off of what we learn from the first, and then the third mission will be the first crewed flight of Starship,” Isaacman said in a press conference Monday (Aug. 19). Starship is a heavy-lift spacecraft under development by SpaceX for interplanetary missions.
Aside from his business experience, Isaacman has roughly 6,000 hours in the cockpit including in high-performance aircraft. He has circumnavigated the globe, performed in air shows and previously owned Draken International, a jet pilot training company.
Scott Poteet
Scott “Kidd” Poteet is pilot of Polaris Dawn. He is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) Lieutenant Colonel and has more than 3,200 flying hours including in numerous high-speed aircraft such as the F-16, A-4, T-38, T-37, T-3, and Alpha Jet, according to his Polaris Dawn biography. His time in the cockpit includes 400 hours of combat during several missions.
“It’s been an awesome journey preparing for this mission,” Poteet said in the Aug. 19 press conference. He said the mission leaned upon SpaceX’s 14,000 employees, who are “some of the brightest and smartest engineers I’ve ever met […] we’re just so thankful for the resources and the time and effort they put into this mission.”
Poteet spent 20 years in the Air Force and his roles included management experience, such as commander of the 64th Aggressor Squadron, USAF Thunderbird No. 4 demonstration pilot, operational test and evaluation pilot, and flight examiner. Poteet also served as director of business development at Draken International (a former company of Isaacman’s), vice-president of strategy at Shift4 (a current Isaacman company), and mission director of Inspiration4.
Sarah Gillis
Sarah Gillis is a mission specialist of Polaris Dawn. She is lead space operations engineer at SpaceX, managing astronaut training. Her previous missions as a trainer include Inspiration4, and International Space Station Dragon missions Demo-2 and Crew-1.
Gillis’ experience at SpaceX also includes Inspiration4, along with NASA Crew Dragon missions Demo-2 and Crew-1, according to her biography. She joined the company in 2015 for an internship while being a student of both engineering and dance at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She was inspired to study aerospace engineering through her high school mentor, former NASA astronaut Joe Tanner.
“This is obviously a development mission, and that’s taken a ton of work across the SpaceX team in order to support these ambitious objectives,” Gillis said of Polaris Dawn at the Aug. 19 press conference.
Anna Menon
Anna Menon is a mission specialist of Polaris Dawn. She is lead operations engineer at SpaceX for crew operations development, and has worked in SpaceX mission control for NASA crewed spaceflights Demo-2 and Crew-1, along with the cargo missions CRS-22 and CRS-23, according to her biography. Additionally to that, she has worked on various aspects of Dragon development including its capabilities for crew.
“I think working at SpaceX gives me a tremendous amount of confidence going to space,” Menon said at the Aug. 19 press conference. “I see the way they do development. I see the way they handle risks, handle change, handle every piece of the mission, and that just gives me tremendous confidence going forward.”
Previous to SpaceX, Menon was a biomedical flight controller for the ISS (including lead for Expedition 47/48’s biomedical operations) and has experience in biomedical engineering with Engineers Without Borders, Engineering World Health and the World Health Organization. She also is a private pilot of small aircraft.
