2024-08-25 03:43:27
SpaceX’s attempt at the first private spacewalk next week will be a test of innovative equipment, including thin spacesuits and a cabin without an airlock, in one of the riskiest missions yet for Elon Musk’s space company, Reuters reported.
A billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot and two female SpaceX employees are preparing to embark on a mission aboard the Dragon spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch on Tuesday. Two days later, two of them will embark on a 20-minute spacewalk at an altitude of about 700 kilometers.
So far, spacewalks have only been made by government astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), 400 kilometers above Earth.
Double Dragons readying for flight ahead of the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 human spaceflight missions pic.twitter.com/PKh1wWoKvK
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 21, 2024
SpaceX’s five-day mission, called Polaris Dawn, will travel in an oval orbit, passing by Earth 120 miles (190 km) as well as 1,400 miles (1,400 km), the furthest distance humans have reached since the end of the lunar cycle. the US Apollo program in 1972.
Crew members, including billionaire Jared Isaacman, will don SpaceX’s new slim suits inside the Dragon transport capsule, modified to be able to open its hatch door in the vacuum of space – an unusual process that eliminates the need from an airlock.
“They’re pushing the limits of what’s possible in a lot of ways. They’re also going to a much higher altitude, with a more severe radiation environment than we’ve been in since Apollo,” former NASA astronaut Garrett Raisman said in an interview.
The mission is funded by Isaacman, the founder of electronic payments company Shift4. He declined to say how much he spent, but the sum is said to exceed $100 million.
He will be joined by mission pilot Scott Poteen, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, senior engineers at the company.
For SpaceX, which has pioneered cheap, reusable rockets and expensive private spaceflight, the mission is an opportunity to develop technologies that could be used on the moon and Mars.
Shortly thereafter, Dragon arrived at our hangar at pad 39A ahead of Falcon 9’s launch of Polaris Dawn pic.twitter.com/HdNYlXCPnQ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 21, 2024
Far beyond the protective bubble of Earth’s atmosphere, the Dragon capsule’s electronics and protections, as well as the spacesuits, will be tested as they pass through parts of the Van Allen Radiation Belt. This is an area where charged particles, coming mainly from the Sun, can damage the electronics of satellites and affect human health.
“That’s an added risk that you don’t face when you just stay in low Earth orbit and go up to the ISS,” Raisman said.
The spacewalk is scheduled for the third day of the mission, but preparations will begin about 45 hours earlier.
The entire cabin of the Dragon capsule will be depressurized and exposed to the vacuum of space. While only two of the astronauts will venture into outer space tethered by ropes, the entire crew will depend on their spacesuits for life support.
Days before the spacewalk, the crew will begin a “pre-breathing” process to fill the cabin with pure oxygen and remove all nitrogen from the air.
If present in the blood of astronauts in space, nitrogen can form bubbles, block blood flow and lead to decompression sickness, as in divers who return too quickly to the surface of the water, writes BTA.
The crew will rely on an ultrasound device to monitor the formation of bubbles, one of many instruments that will be used on the mission to support dozens of science experiments. They will provide researchers with a rare glimpse into how astronauts might fare on the surface of the Moon or elsewhere in deep space.
And while the safety of astronauts on NASA missions is closely monitored by the agency, there are no standards or laws in the U.S. for spaceflight safety on private missions like Polaris.
The @PolarisProgram’s Polaris Dawn mission will be the first crew to perform a spacewalk from Dragon, fly higher in Earth’s orbit than anyone since the Apollo program, test laser-based @Starlink communications, and conduct research to help provide insight on human health during… pic.twitter.com/RW387QWShY
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 22, 2024
SpaceX officials and the mission crew said at a news conference earlier this week that they had planned for a number of contingency scenarios if something during the mission went wrong, such as an oxygen leak or a hatch door failing to close. but without revealing details about them.
Raisman said he knows the Polaris crew and believes its members are prepared to handle any unexpected situations. “However, there is not much room for error,” adds the former NASA astronaut.