Meet the NASA science flying on SpaceX's Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission

Four smiling people in black-and-white spacesuits sit in a space capsule.

Polaris Dawn may be a private mission, but it's conducting research that will benefit NASA.

Polaris Dawn lifted off early Tuesday morning (Sept. 10) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, sending four people to orbit for a roughly five-day stay aboard the Crew Dragon capsule "Resilience." The mission aims to make exploration history, conducting the first-ever private spacewalk and traveling farther from Earth than any crewed flight since the Apollo era.