SpaceX chief Elon Musk recently described the all-civilian Polaris Dawn mission as “epic,” mainly because it will involve the first-ever commercial spacewalk.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft being used in next week’s mission will also carry the four crew members to a point further from Earth than any Crew Dragon has gone before, and will carry humans the farthest from our planet since the final Apollo moon mission in 1972.
While Polaris Dawn crew members Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon won’t be flying anywhere near that far, they are heading to a point about 435 miles (700 kilometers) from Earth and some 185 miles (298 kilometers) above the International Space Station (ISS).
It’s there that Isaacman and Gillis — both non-professional astronauts — plan to exit the Crew Dragon capsule to embark on the groundbreaking spacewalk. During their two hours outside the spacecraft, they’ll confirm the functionality of a newly designed, more mobile spacesuit that could be used in the approaching Artemis moon missions and other voyages to deep space.
SpaceX has just shared a video (below) showing how the spacewalk could look. “The Polaris Program’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 long-duration spaceflight missions,” SpaceX said in a comment accompanying the video.
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
Most Crew Dragons are designed to dock with the ISS, so SpaceX had to redesign the Polaris Dawn spacecraft to provide an exit and reentry point for the historic spacewalk. Spacewalks on the ISS use an airlock between the vacuum of space and the main part of the station, but the redesigned Crew Dragon has no such facility. This means that all four astronauts will have to put on the spacesuits as the capsule readies to open the hatch so that Isaacman and Gillis can leave the vehicle to begin their walk, with the entire spacecraft experiencing a pressure change rather than just a section of it.
The mission will end with a splashdown off the coast of Florida in the same way as Crew Dragons return from the ISS.
For full details on how to watch the mission liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, August 27, Digital Trends has you covered.
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