Update: SpaceX has delayed Polaris Dawn's scheduled launch time by 24 hours, to 3:38 a.m. Wednesday, while crews work on a helium leak on the ground.
Original story: Let's talk about a daring space mission funded by private funds. All four Polar Dawn Crew members will don newly designed spacesuits 435 miles above Earth, then open the hatch of their SpaceX Dragon capsule — which has no airlock, leaving them all vulnerable to the vacuum of space during a pioneering spacewalk.
Or as described by mission commander Jared Isaacman If you do, you ruin the safety of your vehicle — and “your suit becomes your spaceship.”
“They've never really tested these suits in space before.. And the fact that everyone is exposed to the space environment is a little reminiscent of the early days, the Gemini missions,” said Don Platt, director of the Florida Institute of Technology Spaceport Education Center in Titusville.
“When they did their spacewalks, they just opened the door of the Gemini capsule. One crew member sat there and probably strapped in, so he wouldn't fly away – you don't want them both in there. And then the other one stuck his head out and tried to move around in there a little bit,” Platt said.
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“It was very early, and no one realized that you needed things like handrails to hold on to. Otherwise, you really wouldn't have any way to hold on in a microgravity environment,” he said.
The unique Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to launch at 3:38 a.m. EDT Tuesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Backup launch options are also available at 5:23 a.m. and 7:09 a.m. Tuesday, if needed. The FLORIDA TODAY space team will provide live coverage beginning about four hours before liftoff at floridatoday.com/space.
“Polaris has already been delayed by over a year because of all the complexities of really incredible technological issues that have had to be solved to get us to this point, where we are basically ready to go — at the mercy of the weather, as always,” said Emanuel Urquieta, vice chair of aerospace medicine at the University of Central Florida.
“But I think it will be a very historic mission,” Urquieta said.
First attempt at a spacewalk from a Dragon capsule
Promising to “usher in a new era of commercial space exploration,” Polaris Dawn’s orbital flight, lasting approximately five days, will be the world’s first all-civilian spacewalk, using first-generation EVA (extravehicular activity) spacesuits designed by SpaceX. This crew will be the first to conduct a spacewalk from a Dragon capsule, and the spacewalk will be broadcast live.
The Polaris Dawn crew members are Isaacman, pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew F-16 Fighting Falcons, and two SpaceX chief space operations engineers: mission specialist/physician Anna Menon and mission specialist Sarah Gillis.
The spacewalk operation is expected to take about two hours, from the Dragon's ventilation to the capsule's repressurization, Isaacman saidTwo astronauts would each spend 15 to 20 minutes outside the spacecraft.
“We're going to completely empty the vehicle. There are no airlocks on Dragon. That means all four crew members are exposed to the vacuum of space,” Isaacman told the media. during a briefing Monday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
“Two of them will stay inside the vehicle. And two of them, in order, will exit the vehicle. When we get there, we'll use various mobility aids that the SpaceX team has designed – and it'll look like a little dance. And what that means is we'll go through a series of test matrices on the suit,” Isaacman said.
“The idea is to learn as much as possible about this suit and pass that information back to engineers to inform future evolutions of the suit design,” he said.
Why launch the probe so late at night? Isaacman said SpaceX crews chose that window to mitigate risks from micrometeoroids and orbital debris. paint spots as small as 1 cm can strike with enormous force at average orbital speeds of 22,000 mph, NASA reports.
“For the spacewalk itself, we will orient the vehicle in a way that protects the crew members,” Gillis told media during Monday's briefing.
Spacewalk called 'risky adventure'
Crew members expressed confidence in the groundbreaking spacewalk during Monday's media event, citing their training and the work of SpaceX engineers. Isaacman said they conducted a series of “paranoia reviews” and risk briefings on a range of mission parameters.
“EVA is a risky venture. But again, we’ve done all the preparations. We’ve done the capsule testing. We’ve done the suit testing. We’ve done the hyperbaric chambers. We’ve done all the work to really prepare for this,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of construction and flight reliability. He previously served as NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations.
“You know, we kind of took inspiration from NASA's legacy. But I think we also extended NASA's legacy a little bit more,” Gerstenmaier said.
Gillis said SpaceX crews upgraded the Dragon life support system to provide oxygen to the four astronauts during the spacewalk. Before the spacewalk, she said the capsule would slowly depressurize to remove nitrogen from the astronauts' bodies and reduce the risk of decompression sickness. Crew members trained by wearing oxygen masks during a two-day simulation in a vacuum chamber at NASA Johnson Space Center.
“It’s an interesting mission. I think it’s great that we’re doing this kind of thing and pushing the envelope here. There’s been talk about SpaceX and this Polaris program trying to convince NASA to allow them to go and fix the Hubble Space Telescope, which would be a really intriguing event, for a future mission,” Platt said.
“I don't know if NASA is going to embrace that idea. But they're really looking to go beyond the day-to-day activities. They're not just taking a few pictures and saying, 'Hey, I'm in space.' They're actually trying to do something productive. So kudos to them for that,” he said.
Polaris Dawn Orbit Mission Program
- Day 1: Get started, then cross the interior regions of Earth's Van Allen radiation belt up to 1,400 km above the surface. This is the highest altitude reached by astronauts since Apollo 17, the last lunar mission, in December 1972.
- Day 2: Prepare for a spacewalk during a spacesuit “mobility demonstration”; descend into a 700 km cruising orbit.
- Day 3: Don spacesuits, perform leak checks, and perform a spacewalk.
- Day 4: Test a Starlink laser-based communication system.
- Day 5: Prepare for atmospheric reentry.
- Day 6: Re-enter Earth's atmosphere and splash down at one of seven sites off the coast of Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean.
For the latest news and launch schedules from NASA's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.
Rick Neale is a space reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale atRneale@floridatoday.comTwitter/X: @RickNeale1
