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Billionaire Finally Launches on First Private Space-Walk Mission
Hampered last month by bad weather, launch tower problems, and issues with its ride from SpaceX, the Polaris Dawn mission is at last on its way.
But Crew Dragon, partially funded by nearly $5 billion of NASA money to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS in the wake of the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011, brings a whole new angle to such missions. To that end, Polaris Dawn is designed as an early foray into more ambitious private human spaceflights, with the mission—delayed from an initial planned launch date in November 2022—also intended to raise millions of dollars in charitable funds through sponsorship deals and donations for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the US. Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut who performed six space walks, says the duo can expect to see a “spectacular view of Earth and the horizon” that is immensely better than looking through the spacecraft’s window, along with a flood of emotions.
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