SpaceX on Tuesday launched its bold Polaris Dawn mission, a multi-day orbital mission that will feature a four-member civilian crew along with the first spacewalk by non-professional astronauts.
The crew, led by Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, aims to fly deeper into space than any other manned mission in more than half a century, reaching a maximum altitude of 1,400 kilometers.
“Polaris Dawn launches!” SpaceX said alongside a photo of the flight over the X.
The highlight of the mission will be the first spacewalk involving entirely non-professionals wearing newly developed SpaceX extravehicular activity (EVA) suits equipped with head-up displays, helmet cameras and advanced joint mobility systems.
As the Dragon capsule successfully separated from the main engine and took its first glimpse of Earth, there was applause in the mission control center.
“The Polaris Dawn crew is now in ZERO-G!” SpaceX wrote a few minutes later, after the crew got their first taste of zero-gravity.
On the first day of its mission, the spacecraft will reach an altitude so high that it will briefly enter the Van Allen radiation belts, a region filled with high-energy charged particles that could pose health risks to humans over long periods of time.
The mission was delayed several times, first because of a technical problem with the launch tower and then because of weather-related constraints.
The Crew Dragon capsule will not connect to the International Space Station, which is why the weather needed to be favorable during both the launch and splashdown phases, about six days into the flight.
Two years of preparation
Isaacman has declined to disclose his total investment in the project, though reports suggest he paid around $200 million for the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, the first all-civilian orbital mission.
The team includes mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, mission specialist Sarah Gillis, a principal space operations engineer at SpaceX, and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon, a principal space operations engineer at SpaceX.
The four trained for more than two years to prepare for this historic mission, including hundreds of hours spent in simulators, as well as skydiving, centrifuge training, scuba diving and climbing a volcano in Ecuador.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions under the Polaris program, the result of a collaboration between Isaacman, the founder of tech company Shift4 Payments, and billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Also on their to-do list are testing laser-based satellite communications between spacecraft and Starlink (SpaceX’s constellation of over 6,000 internet satellites), working to increase the speed of space communications, and conducting 36 scientific experiments.
These include tests with contact lenses equipped with microelectronics that continuously monitor changes in eye pressure and shape.
Published – September 11, 2024 09:51 am IST