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| SpaceX Polaris Dawn Crew Prepares for Historic Private Spacewalk |
Your place is on the ground, not wandering off into parts of space. No human has entered 50 years above TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield winner Orbital Getspace.
The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, spearheaded by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, took off in the early hours of Tuesday from Florida's Kennedy Space Center and is set to reach up to 870 miles (1,400 kilometers). This is three times higher than the International Space Station, in a zone of space referred to as the inner Van Allen radiation belt, packed full of deadly high-energy particles.
Now in an elliptical orbit with a low of about 120 miles and a high of around 430 miles, the crew of four is preparing for the mission's centerpiece: A bold spacewalk beginning at 0958 GMT on Thursday (3:58 am EST) with a backup window Friday.
Near the start of Thursday, SpaceX pushed back the time by a few hours without any explanation. An earlier version of this article reported that the organization hosted a webcast event one hour prior through its website.
Before the hatch is opened, astronauts will undergo a "pre-breathe" protocol to remove nitrogen from their blood and avoid decompression sickness. Cabin pressure will then be slowly lowered to space levels. Once it is open, Isaacman and fellow crew member Sarah Gillis—a SpaceX engineer designated to take on the so-called "Skywalker" role—will hang from hand and foot holds attached to the hatch, with her feet dangling out of Crew Dragon's new top hatchway.
"Of course, it will sort of look like we are doing a little bit of a dance,” said Isaacman during the press conference. They were testing SpaceX's next-generation suits, which feature heads-up displays (HUDs), helmet cameras, and a new and improved joint mobility system.
They will not drift away on a tether as early spacefarers Alexei Leonov and Ed White did in 1965. Instead, they will remain attached to the vehicle as it orbits Earth at a blazing speed of about 17,500 mph. The Crew Dragon capsule does not have an airlock, so the entire crew will be exposed to a space vacuum for two hours outside.
Once the hatch is closed, the cabin will be repressurized, and O2/N2 levels will return to normal. During the task, with mission pilot Scott Poteet and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon covering for critical support systems (Isaacman & Gillis are each expected to spend roughly 15-20 minutes outside of Dragon), "The risk is greater than zero, that's for sure -- it's higher than anything on a commercial basis," our Sean O'Keefe said.
“Another in a series of pins falling that mark the end of an era and turn toward space as not wild, new — but ubiquitous,” he said on Twitter, comparing these crewmates to the first aviators from past decades whose steps slowly paved the way for what was standard at present.
Third of three Polaris missions: The four had spent more than two years training for the historic flight, practicing in simulators and also slacklining, skydiving, centrifuge immersion testing, and scuba diving—they even climbed an Ecuadoran volcano together.
Apart from their spacewalk, the astronauts will also work to test satellite communications between them and the large Starlink constellation of satellites. They will also perform 36 scientific experiments, such as the Gaze in Space study, which tests contact lenses embedded with sensors to monitor how an astronaut's eye pressure and shape change during their time living in orbit.
The inaugural mission under Isaacman's Polaris program was a team of three missions with SpaceX. The partnership is for an undisclosed value, but Isaacman was said to have personally invested $200M of his own money to head up the 2021 all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration4 orbital mission at age just 41 as founder and CEO of Shift4Payments. The last Polaris mission would be a Starship test flight he hoped would launch his crew on its way to the first human mission bound for Mars, using prototypes of SpaceX's next-generation rockets, which are central to founder Elon Musk's goal of settling the fourth planet from our sun.