Sarah Gillis

Sarah “Cooper” Gillis served as Mission Specialist on Polaris Dawn. She previously spent 11 years as a Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, ultimately overseeing astronaut training for NASA and commercial crews flying on the Dragon spacecraft. She has trained more than 60 astronauts, including the first NASA astronauts on Demo-2 and Crew-1, as well as the first all-civilian crew, Inspiration4. An experienced mission control operator, Sarah has supported Dragon resupply missions to the International Space Station as a navigation officer and human spaceflight missions as a crew communicator. She currently serves at NASA as a Senior Advisor to the Administrator. During Polaris Dawn, she became the youngest person to perform a spacewalk, and alongside Anna Menon, set the record for the farthest distance any woman has traveled from Earth. She also played violin from space, leading the Harmony of Resilience, a global music moment enabled by Starlink technology.