“Polaris Dawn will reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown to, with the goal of reaching a distance of about 1,400 kilometers from Earth. Billionaire Jared Isaacman will conduct a spacewalk on the third day of the mission.
Testing new spacesuits: a crucial objective
One of the key objectives of the mission is to test SpaceX’s spacesuits, which represent a new technology trend crucial to raising the altitude of the Hubble Space Telescope. The 34-year-old telescope is getting closer and closer to Earth and may burn up in the atmosphere by around 2034 because it is too close.
Three years ago, American billionaire Jared Isaacman made history by leading the first all-private astronaut crew into orbit. Now, SpaceX is sending four astronauts into the highest orbit since the Apollo era, where they will spend five days in space and open the hatch to complete the first spacewalk by a private astronaut.
Four private astronauts, including Isaac Mann, founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4, were launched on a Falcon 9 rocket aboard a SpaceX manned Dragon spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 10th. The mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn, was accompanied by three others, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and fighter pilot (Scott “Kidd” Poteet) and two SpaceX employees, of which Sarah Gillis is in charge of SpaceX’s astronaut training program, and Anna Menon is the mission’s supervisor and Mission Control astronaut correspondent.
Polaris Dawn” is the first of three Polaris missions commissioned by Isaac Mann to SpaceX, which will carry out the world’s first private spacewalk on Sept. 12. SpaceX originally planned to launch the ‘Polaris Dawn’ mission on Aug. 26 on a Falcon 9 rocket, but the launch was repeatedly delayed due to technical and weather problems, followed by Falcon 9 recovery failure and grounding. SpaceX originally planned to launch the “Polaris Dawn” mission on August 26 using a Falcon 9 rocket, but the launch was repeatedly delayed due to technical and weather problems, and then suffered a Falcon 9 recovery failure and grounding.
The focus of the mission was a spacewalk on the third day of the mission, and the second mission of the Polaris flight was designed to help improve the orbit of NASA’s Hubble telescope, but NASA has expressed concern that the mission has not yet been finalized. The third was the first manned flight of a SpaceX starship.
Isaacman, who is worth $2 billion, completed the space flight “Inspiration 4” in 2021, when Isaacman chartered four seats in the Dragon spacecraft and donated the remaining three seats he bought to the American public, and the four later took the SpaceX manned Dragon spacecraft to an altitude of more than 500 kilometers and stayed in orbit for three days. Isaacman did not disclose how much was paid to SpaceX for the flight, “We never considered all those costs.” He said the Polaris Dawn mission is intended to continue NASA’s work to help humans reach the moon and Mars, and eventually expand into the solar system.
One of the mission’s key objectives is to test SpaceX’s spacesuits, which have taken more than two years to develop to protect astronauts from radiation and extreme temperatures, and to ensure that the astronauts are free to move around and communicate with each other and ground controllers. The new spacesuits will attempt to send communications between the Dragon spacecraft and a constellation of SpaceX Starlink Internet satellites via laser pulses rather than radio signals.
All four astronauts will wear space suits while the capsule is depressurized for the actual mission. Isaacman and Gillis will take turns leaving the hatch, and they will be tethered to the spacecraft and stabilized using special handrails called “Skywalkers.” They plan to conduct several maneuverability tests near the hatch. Poteet and Menon will remain in the capsule, staring at the monitors, but “taking the same risks as we would in the vacuum of space.” Isaacman said.
Potential hubble rescue: high stakes and challenges
Testing SpaceX’s spacesuits is also crucial to raising the altitude of the Hubble Space Telescope. The 34-year-old telescope is getting closer and closer to Earth and could burn up in the atmosphere by around 2034 because it’s too close. If SpaceX and Isaacman can raise its orbit, NASA will save tens of millions of dollars and the telescope’s lifespan will be extended.
But the Hubble mission is dangerous, fatal errors can occur, and instead of saving the telescope, private astronauts could damage U.S. national assets or worse, jeopardize their own lives. But Isaacman said in the interview that a successful spacewalk would prove that his team is capable of handling a mission as complex and dangerous as the Hubble telescope mission.
Notably, Isaacman has said that the Polaris Dawn mission will reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown. “Polaris Dawn’s highest goal is to reach a distance of about 1,400 kilometers from Earth. The current record is more than 1,300 kilometers, set by NASA’s Gemini 11 astronauts in 1966.
The first few orbits of the mission will pass through a dip in the Earth’s magnetic field known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, a magnetic weak spot that allows high-energy charged particles from the Van Allen belts to come closer to the Earth’s surface. For a few hours, the Polaris Dawn astronauts will receive an amount of radiation equivalent to that absorbed by ISS astronauts over a three-month period. After about eight orbits of the Dragon, the spacecraft’s thrusters will ignite and push it about 1,400 kilometers from Earth. After about six such high orbits, the Dragon will fire its thrusters again, landing the spacecraft in a lower elliptical orbit with an apogee of 700 kilometers.
