SpaceX has confirmed that it will attempt to launch the mission Polaris Dawn from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA), at 11.23am, Spanish peninsular time. It is the first of three flights of a new space program that the space company has launched thanks to the financing of the technological multimillionaire Jared Isaacman, who will lead a crew that does not include any astronauts from a government space agency.
For the first time, a fully private spaceflight will attempt a spacewalk – something previously reserved for astronauts from NASA, ESA, and the Russian, Canadian, Chinese, and Japanese space agencies. In addition, a modified version of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule – which normally transports crew to the International Space Station – will take the four civilian astronauts farther than any human has gone since the last of the missions. Apollo to the Moon, in 1972.
This is the second time that Isaacman, founder of the payment processing company Shift4, has flown into space. As on the first occasion – on the mission Inspiration4 in 2021—the entrepreneur, philanthropist and pilot will serve as commander. Rounding out the crew are retired U.S. Air Force pilot Scott Poteet and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. Both will mark the milestone of being the first SpaceX staff members to travel to space. The mission Polaris Dawn SpaceX is scheduled to reach a maximum altitude of 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) during the first of its five-day flight — passing through radiation belts in space — and conduct a spacewalk on the third day. To overcome those challenges, SpaceX has designed a new spacesuit that it will test for the first time on this flight.
If the Polaris Dawn mission succeeds, Gillis and Menon will become the highest-flying women in history, beating NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan’s record of 621 km. One of the unique things about this spaceflight is that—in a near-Earth orbit—it will fly much higher than usual. While the International Space Station, for example, orbits at an average altitude of 400 kilometers, this spaceflight is planned to reach a maximum altitude of 1,400 kilometers during the first of its five-day flight.
At that distance from Earth, the Polaris Dawn spacecraft will pass through several of the radiation belts surrounding our planet and conduct scientific experiments to assess the risks of operating in this harsher-than-usual environment for astronauts. Another critical moment of the mission will take place on the third day — this Thursday, if the launch goes as planned — when the Dragon capsule hatch will open and the entire crew will experience the complete vacuum of floating in open space, something that very few current astronauts achieve. In addition, two of the crew members, Isaacman and Gillis, will then perform a spacewalk. With all these ambitious milestones ahead, SpaceX has designed a new spacesuit that it will test for the first time on this mission.
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