SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission is about to make history. The SpaceX mission is scheduled to launch on Tuesday (August 26) morning, where four people will be sent to orbit for about five days aboard the Crew Dragon capsule.
The mission will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This quartet is believed to go further than the Apollo era. Two of the four are going to perform a spacewalk, which will be the first ever conducted by a private spaceflight.
The Polaris Dawn crew involves four members: billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is going to lead and command; pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel; and two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who are appointed as mission specialists.
This mission is the first of three planned in the Polaris programme, fully funded and commanded by Isaacman, who earlier led the Inspiration4 mission in September 2021.
The Polaris Dawn will not join the International Space Station but will be a free-flying mission in Earth’s orbit.
What tests are going to be conducted
The crew will reach an altitude of up to 700 kilometres. The mission will extend over 5 days, and include different scientific experiments and even testing SpaceX’s new extravehicular activity (EVA) suit, designed for the vacuum of space.
“It’ll look like we’re doing a little bit of a dance. And what that is, we’re going through a series of test matrices on the suit,” Isaacman said. “The idea is to learn as much as we possibly can about the suit and get it back to the engineers to inform future suit design evolutions.”
The EVA suits, designed by SpaceX and developed in-house, are not specifically made for Polaris Dawn, but it is the vision of the company to use them in further missions or build future versions of them, like for various Earth orbits or beyond.
“It’s not lost on us that, you know, it might be 10 iterations from now and a bunch of evolutions of the suit, but that, someday, someone could be wearing a version of which that might be walking on Mars,” Isaacman said. “And it feels like, again, a huge honour to have that opportunity to test it out on this flight.”
The significance of the mission
This mission has the potential to open new gates for the space industry. The Polaris Dawn mission also signifies philanthropic goals, aiming to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
This mission holds the power to determine SpaceX’s leadership position in the sector of private space travel and exploration.
(With inputs from agencies)
Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
