2024-09-12 14:20:15
A four-person crew set off on a mission with SpaceX this morning. A private spacewalk is planned – that’s historic.
After several postponements, it has now worked: a four-person crew set off this morning with the space company SpaceX for the first privately financed spacewalk to date. He and his colleagues had been preparing for the five-day “Polaris Dawn” mission for two and a half years, said US billionaire and mission leader Jared Isaacman before the launch.
Isaacman is financing the “Polaris” program, which includes three missions, together with entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX. “This will be legendary,” Musk wrote on the online service X with a view to the planned spacewalk.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon capsule with the four astronauts into space on Tuesday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In addition to Isaacman and pilot Scott Poteet, two SpaceX employees are on board: Sarah Gillis is responsible for astronaut training at SpaceX, and Anna Menon previously worked at the US space agency NASA.
Isaacman had already taken part in SpaceX’s first space tourism flight in 2021. The aircraft and space fan chartered a rocket and a Dragon space capsule from SpaceX and stayed in Earth orbit for three days with three companions.
The quartet completed intensive training for the Polaris Dawn mission, including 2,000 hours in a flight simulator, sessions in a centrifuge, diving, parachute jumps and a climb up the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador.
During their mission, the private astronauts will carry out around 40 experiments. They will also travel up to 1,400 kilometers from Earth with their spacecraft, further than any astronaut has traveled since the Apollo moon missions. Since only men were on board then, Gillis and Menon will be the women who have traveled the furthest from Earth to date with this mission.
The spacewalk on the third day will be broadcast live on the Internet. Since the Dragon capsule does not have an airlock, the entire spacecraft will be exposed to the vacuum of space as soon as the door is opened. Two of the passengers will stay on board at a time, while the other two leave the capsule. During the spacewalk, the astronauts will test spacesuits developed by SpaceX.
A second, similar mission is planned as part of the “Polaris” program. The third mission will also be the first manned flight for SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket. This is currently still under development and completed its first successful test flight in June after three failed attempts. In two years, Starship is expected to bring people back to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.