Florida

Polaris Dawn mission is now the farthest from Earth than humans have ever been in the last 50 years. The private crew of the mission is on a Dragon spaceship and will undertake the first spacewalk by non-astronauts. 

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"Achievement unlocked -- apogee 1,400.7 km," SpaceX said on X Tuesday night.

It wrote in another post, "Polaris Dawn and Dragon at 1,400 km above Earth – the farthest humans have travelled since the Apollo program over 50 years ago."

This distance is more than three times farther from Earth than the International Space Station that hovers over the planet. 

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Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, re-posted the message and wrote, "Strive to greater heights, For a future brighter than the past, Waking up each morning inspired, To learn new secrets of the Universe!

The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission is being led by Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman on a roughly five-day trek. It launched early Tuesday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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At this height, the spaceship needs to dodge the hazardous, high-radiation Van Allen belt. Musk had earlier also warned that there is  "no room for error in our calculations" as the spaceship "will travel repeatedly through the orbital altitudes of over 10 thousand satellites and bits of space debris."

Pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, is also on the spacecraft. Two female SpaceX engineers are also on the historic mission. Mission specialist Sarah Gillis and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon have now become the first women to travel this far away from Earth.

The spacewalk is scheduled to happen on Thursday 0623 GMT, the first ever by civilians. They will don SpaceX extravehicular activity (EVA) suits with heads-up displays, helmet cameras and advanced joint mobility systems.

Two crewmates will venture out, in turn, for 15 to 20 minutes each.