2024-08-27 01:27:33
A four-person crew will launch on Tuesday with Musk’s space company SpaceX on a mission. The first private spacewalk is planned.
A four-person crew is set to set off on Tuesday with the space company SpaceX on a mission that will include the first privately funded spacewalk to date. He and his colleagues have been preparing for the five-day “Polaris Dawn” mission for two and a half years, said US billionaire and mission chief Jared Isaacman in the run-up to the project.
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 is scheduled to launch 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 will be 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 has undergone intensive training for the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission, including 2,000 hours in a flight simulator, sessions in a centrifuge, scuba diving, parachute jumps and a climb up the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador.
During their mission, the private astronauts will conduct around 40 experiments. They will also be taking their spacecraft 1,400 kilometers away from Earth, further than any astronaut since the Apollo moon missions. Since only men were on board at the time, Gillis and Menon will become the women who have traveled the furthest away from Earth to date.
Tests for laser communication between the spacecraft and SpaceX’s Starlink satellites orbiting in space are also planned. Most importantly, on the third day of their mission, the crew will complete the first commercial spacewalk, which 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; after three failed attempts, it completed its first successful test flight in June. In two years, Starship will be used to bring people back to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
“I want my children to see people walking on the moon and Mars and setting out to explore our solar system,” said billionaire Isaacman. “We haven’t even scratched the surface yet. There is so much out there to explore and discover.”