During the initial hours of the spaceflight, the crew will seek to fly in a highly elliptical orbit, reaching an altitude as high as 1,400 km (870 miles) above the planet's surface. This will be the highest Earth-orbit mission ever flown by humans and the farthest any person has flown from Earth since the Apollo Moon landings more than half a century ago. This will expose the crew to a not insignificant amount of radiation, and they will collect biological data to assess harms. //

Isaacman's interest in performing the first private spacewalk accelerated, by years, SpaceX's development of these spacesuits. This really is just the first generation of the suit, and SpaceX is likely to continue iterating toward a spacesuit that has its own portable life support system (PLSS). This is the "backpack" on a traditional spacesuit that allows NASA astronauts to perform spacewalks untethered to the International Space Station.

The general idea is that, as the Starship vehicle makes the surface of the Moon and eventually Mars more accessible to more people, future generations of these lower-cost spacesuits will enable exploration and settlement. That journey, in some sense, begins with this mission's brief spacewalks, with Isaacman and Gillis tethered to the Dragon vehicle for life support. //

This is the first of three "Polaris" missions that Isaacman is scheduled to fly with SpaceX. The plan for the second Polaris mission, also to fly on a Dragon spacecraft, has yet to be determined. But it may well employ a second-generation spacesuit based on learnings from this spaceflight. The third flight, unlikely to occur before at least 2030, will be an orbital launch aboard the company's Starship vehicle—making Isaacman and his crew the first to fly on that rocket.