2024-08-26 18:24:44
Four astronauts are scheduled to set off on a mission with space company SpaceX on Tuesday, during which they will conduct the first privately funded spacewalk to date. American billionaire and mission leader Jared Isaacman said before the program began that he and his colleagues had been preparing for the five-day Polaris Dawn mission for two and a half years.
Isaacman is funding the Polaris program, which includes three missions in total, with entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX. “This is going to be legendary,” Musk wrote on the online service X, looking at the planned spacewalk.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts into space from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday morning. In addition to Isaacman and pilot Scott Poteet, there will be two SpaceX employees on board: Sarah Gillis, who is responsible for SpaceX’s astronaut training, and Anna Menon, who previously worked at NASA.
Isaacson has already participated in SpaceX’s first space tourism flight in 2021. The airplane and space enthusiast chartered a rocket and a Crew Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX and spent three days in Earth orbit with three companions.
The quartet has completed intensive training for the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission. This includes 2,000 hours of flight simulator, centrifuge training, diving, skydiving and climbing the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador.
During the mission, the private astronauts will conduct approximately 40 experiments. In addition, they will be able to travel aboard a spacecraft up to 1,400 kilometers from Earth, the furthest distance astronauts have traveled since the Apollo moon missions. With only men on board at the time, Gillis and Menon’s mission would make them the furthest women have ever traveled from Earth.
There are also plans to test laser communications between the spacecraft and SpaceX’s Starlink satellites in orbit. Most importantly, on the third day of the mission, astronauts will complete the first commercial spacewalk, which will be broadcast live on the Internet.
Since the Dragon spacecraft does not have an airlock, once the hatch is opened, the entire spacecraft will be exposed to the vacuum of space. Two of the passengers will take turns staying on the ship while the other two leave the capsule. During the spacewalk, astronauts will test spacesuits developed by SpaceX.
As part of Project Polaris, a second similar mission is planned. The third mission will also be the first manned flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket. The feature is still under development; after three failed attempts, it successfully completed its first test flight in June. Two years later, Starship will land humans on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
“I want my kids to see people walking on the moon and Mars and starting to explore our solar system,” billionaire Isaacman said. “We haven’t even scratched the surface yet. There’s a lot out there to explore and discover. .
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