When astronaut Pete Conrad, the commander of NASA's Gemini 11 mission, fired his spacecraft engine on Sept. 14, 1966 to climb to a record orbital altitude of 850 miles, he didn't keep his enthusiasm contained. Whoop-de-doo! the former Naval aviator exclaimed. That's the biggest thrill of my life. I've got India at the left window and Borneo under our nose.
The new benchmark involved more than just record-setting; there was science too. The Earth is surrounded by twin bands of radiation, known as the Van Allen Belts, extending from a low of 400 miles above the planet to a high of 36,000 miles.
One of the goals of Polaris Dawn is to study both the Dragon and the crew in that perilous environment, to see if either one suffers any ill-effects, since trips to the moon and Mars require surfing through the Van Allen breakers.
Some of the research that we will do really digs into that radiation environment looking at how medication affects how astronauts might respond in extreme conditions.
Collection
[
|
...
]