The company SpaceX successfully completed the final tests on Monday prior to the launch on Tuesday of the historic manned Polaris Dawn mission, which will attempt the first commercial spacewalk this week and will also reach an altitude not reached in more than 50 years.
As confirmed early Monday morning by the founder and president of SpaceX, Elon MuskFollowing tests carried out on Sunday – with the crew included – the firm has obtained the green light for the launch of the mission, which is scheduled for 3:38 pm on Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (United States).
“The safety of the crew is absolutely paramount and this mission carries more risks than usual as it will be the furthest distance humans have traveled from Earth since the NASA program.” POT) Apollo and the first commercial spacewalk”Musk said on the social network X.
This is the first of three missions that billionaire Jared Isaacman has purchased from SpaceX in 2022 for his Polaris Program, at an undisclosed price. Isaacman, founder of the internet payments company Shift4, commanded the historic Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the first fully commercial mission to orbit the planet.
The Polaris Dawn crew, who are expected to be in space for five days, is completed by former US Air Force pilot Scott Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who will serve as flight medical specialist and flight medical officer, respectively.
They will travel aboard a Dragon capsule that will be launched by a Falcon 9 rocket, both manufactured by SpaceX, which will begin traveling on its own about 12 minutes after takeoff and throughout its five-day flight will maintain an elliptical trajectory.
On its first day of travel, Polaris Dawn will reach a maximum altitude above Earth of about 870 miles, higher than any astronaut has traveled since the end of NASA’s Apollo program in 1972 and about 600 miles higher than where the International Space Station (EEI).
This will put Dragon and its crew in the first stretches of the Van Allen Belts, a zone of energetic particles around Earth that begins at an altitude of 400 miles and extends out to about 36,000 miles.
The crew will remain in orbit for about ten hours, during which time they will carry out a series of scientific tests to study the effects of a highly radiated environment on the human body.
At that time, Menon and Gillis will also become the women who have traveled the farthest from Earth in history, farther than their predecessor, NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, who traveled some 386 miles aboard the space shuttle.
The walk
On its third day of travel, Polaris Dawn is scheduled to conduct what will be the first private spacewalk, which will initially last about two hours and will be done in turns by Isaacman and Gillis, assisted by 12-foot-long cables.
The operation will be broadcast live on several cameras inside and outside the capsule, through whose hatch in the dome Isaacman will emerge first, followed by Gillis.
For the historic spacewalk, which will take place at an altitude of about 435 miles above the planet, crew members will be equipped with new extravehicular activity (EVA) suits designed by SpaceX to offer greater flexibility and range of motion.
The suits, which will be pressurized and equipped with cameras, will be worn by all four crew members because Dragon has no airlocks and so the entire capsule must be depressurized before the hatch can be opened for the spacewalk.
During the mission, the crew will conduct nearly 40 experiments for “critical scientific investigations” related to human health, “both on Earth and during future long-duration space flights,” according to the Polaris Program.
Like Inspiration4, which raised more than $250 million in donations for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Polaris Dawn will also raise funds for the same children’s hospital.
The mission is scheduled to land off the coast of Florida on its sixth day.