This past Thursday, two people made history by successfully completing what is the first private space trip, in the mission known as Polaris Dawn. The spacewalk was undertaken by Sarah Gillus, lead engineer of Space X operations and flight medical officer, and the American billionaire, previously unknown, Jared Isaacman.
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The Polaris mission took off on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral (Florida) and achieved another milestone last Wednesday by surpassing 1,400 kilometers of distance from Earth, the farthest manned journey since the Apollo missions over 50 years ago.
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Who is Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who took a private trip to space?
Jared Isaacman is a 41-year-old entrepreneur and commercial astronaut who has fulfilled his dream of traveling to space. When he was 15 years old, he dropped out of school and started developing websites for small businesses. Years later, in 2015, his business, of which he was the founder and CEO, was already generating $300 million in revenue and five years later he rebranded the company, renaming it Shift4 Payments.
Passionate about aviation, the magnate co-founded 'Draken International' in 2012, a Florida-based company that serves as a provider of tactical combat aircraft for contracted air services that include clients from the military and defense industries. This company helped him grow his fortune, as he acquired a majority stake from Blackstone, an investment bank.
Polaris Dawn is the first of the three space missions purchased from Elon Musk's Space X in 2022, for an undisclosed amount. It is worth noting that Isaacman already has experience in space flights as in 2021, with Inspiration4, the first fully commercial one, the man managed to orbit the planet.
Now, with his walk, which lasted about 15 minutes per crew member, Isaacman joined a select list of people who have achieved a spacewalk. During the walk, key tests of flexibility and resistance of the spacesuit were carried out, in an environment where risks are high due to direct exposure to the vacuum of space.