The Polaris Dawn commercial space mission is funded and led by billionaire Jared Isaacman. The crew also includes a former fighter pilot and two employees of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the company that developed the rocket.
During the mission, the crew is expected to test new spacesuits and Starlink’s laser communication in space.
The mission’s financier Jared Isaacman will also conduct the world’s first privately arranged spacewalk.
The professor: Environments with radiation
According to former astronaut Garrett Reisman, who is also a professor of space engineering at the University of Southern California, the mission is not entirely risk-free.
– They will travel to a higher altitude with a more demanding radiation environment than we have been since Apollo, he tells the Reuters news agency.
Watch the clip: Here the crew is launched into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in Florida.