Polaris Dawn takes to the skies, setting the stage for a daring private spacewalk

Enlarge / A Crew Dragon spacecraft separates from the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday morning. (credit: SpaceX)

A Falcon 9 rocket streaked into the blackened the pre-dawn sky above Florida on Tuesday, carrying four people on the most ambitious private human spaceflight to date.

The crew of the Polaris Dawn mission, led by a billionaire pilot named Jared Isaacman, were injected into an orbit intended to reach an apogee of 1,200 km and a perigee of 190 km. They plan to raise Crew Dragon’s orbit to an apogee of 1,400 km near the end of the first day of flight.

Shortly after the mission’s launch, Isaacman thanked the flight controllers, engineers, and technicians at SpaceX that made the privately funded trip possible. “We wouldn’t be on this journey without all 14,000 of you back at SpaceX,” he said.