SpaceX Polaris Dawn Splashdown: The mission advanced Elon Musk’s plan to Mars

They donned new SpaceX spacesuits that had never been tested in orbit, opened their ship in the vacuum of space, and performed the first commercial spacewalk.

In addition, they were exposed to high levels of space radiation, far greater than those experienced by astronauts aboard the International Space Station during the same period of time. And they endured a fiery crash back to Earth.

It was all in the name of paving the way to Mars.

If you ask Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who financed and commissioned the mission, it was also in the name of raising funds for childhood cancer research at the Children’s Research Hospital of St. Jude.

As he previously told Business Insider, ahead of his first SpaceX flight in 2021, he wanted to “take care of some of the problems we have here on Earth so that we earn the right to go and explore among the stars”.

But the technical aspects of the mission — the spacewalk, the spacesuits, the Starlink laser communication, the flight through a radiation belt — were critical tests of the technologies SpaceX will need to fly humans to the red planet.

Isaacman’s future plans also fit with the Mars project. He plans two more Polaris missions and says the third will ditch Crew Dragon for Starship. This is the Statue of Liberty-sized mega-rocket that SpaceX is developing in South Texas for the express purpose of colonizing Mars.

Mars pioneers return home

As the Crew Dragon hurtled back toward Earth, piercing the atmosphere, superheated plasma roared at the edges of its protective heat shield.

Isaacman had done this before, but it was the first space flight for the other three crew members: a former US Air Force pilot named Scott Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.

They felt a jolt as the spacecraft launched its parachutes to descend into the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas. It wobbled in the waves, looking like a toasted marshmallow, until a ship picked it up and SpaceX workers helped the crew off.

Five days after launch, they officially completed the most daring commercial manned spaceflight to date.

Space walks and spacesuits for Mars

The main event of the mission was the spacewalk.

The crew spent 48 hours slowly depressurizing their spacecraft so they could open the hatch in the vacuum of space, sending Isaacman and Gillis to look at Earth and perform some mobility exercises.

They were testing SpaceX’s new extravehicular spacesuits, designed to let a spacecraft carry out maintenance or repairs — a skill future Mars humans will need because the journey takes months.

“It could be 10 iterations from now and a bunch of evolutions of the suit,” but one day someone may even be wearing a version of these spacesuits “going to Mars,” Isaacman said in a pre-launch briefing in August .

“There will be an army of starships arriving on Mars at some point in the future,” he added. “Those people are going to have to be able to get out of it and walk around and do important things.”

Radiation on its way to Mars

Polaris Dawn also addressed another big challenge for manned missions to Mars: extreme radiation exposure. Humans traveling to Mars would be exposed to massive amounts of space radiation for months at a time.

So the Crew Dragon spacecraft flew through two donuts of intense radiation around Earth, called the Van Allen belts. The crew performed tests and measurements to see how it affected their bodies.

“If we ever get to Mars, we’d like to be able to come back and be healthy enough to tell people about it,” Isaacman said in August.

Other medical experiments on the mission checked their eyes, veins and airways to help SpaceX better understand the impact of long-distance spaceflight.

Communications for Mars

Polaris Dawn also tested laser-based communications using Starlink, the network of Internet satellites that SpaceX has built in Earth orbit.

Commercial astronauts posted mid-Mission X saying they uploaded their photos there using Starlink internet.

These space lasers lay the groundwork for future communications with deep space missions—that is, as the Polaris website says, “for missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.”

Isaacman seems to be gifted to make it happen.

“I would definitely want my kids to see people going to the moon and Mars and venturing out and exploring our solar system,” he said ahead of the launch.