Jaime Mateus

The Polaris Dawn crew and dozens of principal investigators and scientists convened in Houston, Texas, yesterday to overview the initial findings of the nearly 40 science and research experiments conducted during the Polaris Dawn campaign and its five-day mission in space. We look forward to sharing more details from these experiments soon!

The ride to orbit was much smoother than I had anticipated. Apart from the final minute before SECO, I barely felt any G-forces—it honestly felt like just another flight. I had imagined it would feel like being in an elevator that suddenly drops, but that sensation never came. If I hadn’t set free Tyler, the polar bear zero-gravity indicator, I might not have realized we were already weightless. I think being tightly strapped into our seat buckets made the transition less noticeable. The first few hours in microgravity weren’t exactly comfortable. Space motion sickness hit all of us—we felt nauseous and ended up vomiting a couple of times. It felt different from motion sickness in a car or at sea. You could still read on your iPad without making it worse. But even a small sip of water could upset your stomach and trigger vomiting. Rabea spent some time on the ham radio, making contact with Berlin. No one asked opening the cupola on the first day—we were all focused on managing the motion sickness. We had a movie night watching our own launch and went to sleep a bit earlier than scheduled. We all slept really well. By the second morning, I felt completely refreshed. The trace of motion sickness is all gone. We had breakfast, took a few X-ray images, and opened the cupola three minutes after midnight UTC—right above the South Pole. Stay tuned.