The highest point of the mission has been reached, and now the four private astronauts of the “Polaris Dawn” mission are about to embark on their spacewalks in spacesuits that are being used for the first time. The crew will attempt to exit the Crew Dragon on Thursday at 8:23 a.m. CEST, the space company SpaceX announced. If necessary, there will be an alternative option the following day, Friday the 13th, at the same time.
Astronauts on the ISS space station are usually given several weeks before an external mission so that their bodies can get used to the conditions and the risk of mistakes is reduced. Regarding the “Polaris Dawn” exit on the third day of the flight, the German astronaut Reinhold Ewald said that such an early external mission was only responsible if everyone involved was feeling well, including those staying in the spacecraft.
In preparation, the “Polaris Dawn” crew went through a so-called pre-breathe process. This involves slowly removing nitrogen from the blood so that the gas does not form bubbles in the tissue and bloodstream when the pressure changes.
A few hours after launch on Tuesday, the privately financed space mission had reached its maximum altitude of 1,400 kilometers for a total of six orbits of the Earth, as SpaceX announced on the short message service X. This is the greatest distance humans have been from Earth since the last Apollo missions to the moon in the early 1970s. The ISS is at an altitude of about 400 kilometers.
Billionaire entrepreneur Isaacman is leading the mission, which will last up to five days, in coordination with SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who will remain on the ground. Isaacman and SpaceX employee Gillis were joined by former jet pilot Kidd Poteet and SpaceX employee Anna Menon on board the Crew Dragon, which was launched into space on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral spaceport on the west coast of Florida.
2024-09-11 23:00:33