Next week, four private individuals will set off on an unprecedented space mission that is planned to feature the first spacewalk carried out entirely by a commercial crew.
The Polaris Dawn mission is slated to launch on Monday between 3:30 and 7 a.m. ET from NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The founder and CEO of Shift4, a payment processing company run by billionaire Jared Isaacman, will lead the Polaris Dawn trip. This is the first of three space missions that Isaacman is planning and sponsoring as part of the Polaris initiative, which he is organizing and funding with SpaceX. In 2021, Isaacman was flown into orbit as a component of SpaceX’s first mission comprised solely of civilians.
Two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon, and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who will serve as the mission’s pilot, make up the other three members of the crew.
Atop a Falcon 9 rocket, they will travel through space in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The five-day mission is intended to take them to the highest orbital altitude reached by humans since the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972, which is more than three times higher than the International Space Station.
The spacewalk, which will see two crew members leave the capsule for up to 20 minutes while attached to a tether, is scheduled to occur three days into the mission. In the past, spacewalks were exclusively carried out by astronauts employed by government space agencies to construct or renovate space stations, fix satellites, and finish scientific research.
The planned height for the Polaris Dawn spacewalk is 435 miles above Earth. During the intended excursion, the entire Crew Dragon spacecraft will be subjected to space vacuum because the craft lacks an airlock.
Consequently, all four astronauts—including the two who are still inside—will don and test SpaceX spacesuits intended for upcoming extended-duration flights.
During a press conference on Monday from the Kennedy Space Center, Isaacman stated, “The goal is to gather as much information as we can about this suit and provide it to the engineers so that it might influence how the design of future suits is developed.”
For the previous two years, Isaacman and the other crew members trained for the flight.
In a statement released on Monday, Isaacman stated, “Our goal is to encourage people to dream big and envision what is possible for both Earth and planets beyond.”
During their five days in space, the commercial astronauts are scheduled to do numerous scientific experiments and test laser-based satellite communication utilizing SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
Up to 870 miles above Earth’s surface, their Crew Dragon capsule will travel high enough to pass through portions of the inner Van Allen radiation belt, a zone of high-energy radiation particles formed like a donut and held in place by the magnetosphere of Earth.
The purpose of the voyage is to investigate human and spacecraft health in various radiation-prone settings. Because astronauts must fly through the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts in order to reach space, this finding will be important for planning future missions to the moon and Mars.
Poteet referred to the mission as “the pinnacle of my flying career” in a statement.
He flew military fighters for twenty years, and in 2021, he served as Isaacson’s mission director while on the ground.
Poteet remarked, “I’m so grateful for the chance to travel into space.”
Poteet and Isaacson’s SpaceX engineers have also worked behind the scenes on commercial spaceflights. Gillis is in charge of SpaceX’s astronaut training program as a chief space operations engineer. Menon has worked in the mission control center of SpaceX and is also a lead space operations engineer.
As with Isaacman’s previous space voyage, the Polaris Dawn mission will raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Isaacman has not publicly discussed the potential goals or schedule for the second and third Polaris flights, nor has he disclosed the cost of the Polaris Dawn mission.