Polaris Program

View of the Earth as seen from Polaris Dawn capsule Crew Dragon ‘Resilience’
Photo: Polaris Program via X.com

Polaris Dawn has not wasted any time setting new spaceflight records.

Highest Orbit Ever: 1400.7 km

During ther first two days of their spaceflight, astronauts Sara Gillis, Jared Isaacman, Anna Menon and Scott “Kid” Poteet have set a new record for the highest crewed orbital spaceflight and 1,400 km, or 870 miles, above Earth’s surface. That broke Gemini 11 and NASA Astronaut Pete Conrad’s 1,373 km or 853 miles record set in 1966.

Furthest From Earth By Women: 1400.7 km

On Discovery’s middeck, the STS-31 crew poses for a traditional in-flight portrait. Astronaut Loren J. Shriver, mission commander, is at lower left. Astronaut Charles F. Bolden, pilot, floats above. Others, left to right, are Kathryn D. Sullivan, Bruce McCandless II and Steven A. Hawley, all mission specialists. Photo credit: NASA

At the same time, Gillis and Menon became the highest-flying female astronauts, a notable achievement in its own right. The previous record holder was NASA Astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, who reached an altitude of 621 km, or 386 miles, aboard the Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery on the STS-31 mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.

Most Humans In Orbit: 19

Polaris Dawn’s astronauts are also part of the list of most people in orbit in human history, which was set today with the launch of Soyuz MS-26 carrying two Russian cosmonauts and NASA Astronaut Don Pettit to the International Space Station. That makes nineteen people in orbit, breaking the previous record of 17 set in 2023:

  • Soyuz MS-26: Don Pettit, Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, aboard ISS
  • Starliner CFT / Crew 9: Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams, aboard ISS
  • Crew 8: Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, Alexander Grebenkin, aboard ISS
  • Soyuz MS-25: Oleg Kononenko, Tracy Dyson, Nikolai Chub, aboard ISS
  • Shenzou 18: Li Guangsu, Li Cong, Ye Guangfu, aboard Tiangong
  • Polaris Dawn: Sarah Gillis, Jared Isaacman, Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, in flight

Mission Update: September 11, 2024

Crew Update: September 11, 2024

Late in the afternoon, the crew of Polaris Dawn released this update:

Polaris Dawn’s New World Records, Considered:

Polaris Dawn crew: Commander Jared Isaacman, left, and Anna Menon, Sarah Gillis and Scott Poteet to the right.
Photo: Jon Kraus / Polaris Dawn

The two records Polaris Dawn has broken are both long-standing, and both new records are reminiscent of the early days in aviation when new records were set with regularity.

People know Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart for their first trans-Atlantic flights. They are also probably familiar with some of Howard Hughes’ aviation achievements; he not only built and designed record-breaking aircraft but often flew them himself.

There are other less famous names who have set aviation records. You may not know of pioneers like Rudolph W. “Shorty” Schroeder, who reached a world-record height of 33,114 feet in 1920, or Jacqueline Cochran, the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound, among many other records she set.

Jacqueline Cochran
Via: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

All those people — and many others — were pioneering trailblazers who raised the bar, and now the Polaris Dawn crew has joined that small, elite club.

Their records will eventually be broken — for example, Christina Koch will achieve the farthest a woman has traveled from the Earth when she orbits the moon aboard Artemis II, and some crew will eventually orbit higher than 1,400 km above the Earth surface. That will be progress, and it will not diminish the progress Polaris Dawn has made.

Records are made to be broken and that’s exactly what Polaris Dawn is doing while it’s in space.

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