Photo: Polaris Program
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon is set to kick off the Polaris Project on the eventual first human space flight aboard Starship, and now the crew has officially announced the research projects it will focus on its first mission.
The Polaris Program announced 38 potential research projects it may conduct aboard Dragon and the partnering institutions offering up the experiments, as announced on the project’s website on Monday.
The project is being funded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who last year funded the Inspiration4 mission and will fund the Polaris Program mission too. Polaris Dawn is the first mission aboard Dragon, followed by Mission II and Mission III with Starship is the goal.
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The projects were created alongside 23 partnering institutions, all designed to help “advance both human health on Earth and on future long-duration spaceflights,” according to the web page.
The team is currently working on selecting a smaller portion from the 38 research projects for which ones to include in-flight, and the included projects will be announced closer to the launch.
The experiments range in nature and in origin, studying subjects such as ultrasound and MRI technology, bone and muscle density, improved camera technologies and more.
Last week, a video surfaced with YouTube host Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut training alongside the SpaceX Polaris Dawn team, after Isaacman invited him and others to join for the event.
