The first SpaceX spacewalk, in the frame of a private mission, is scheduled for August 26. The four-person crew will launch from Florida, with a crew consisting of Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, and a pair of SpaceX employees, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
SpaceX is preparing to launch its next private mission, which will see astronauts attempt their first spacewalk. The Polaris Dawn mission is the first of three flights Shift4 founder Jared Isaacman purchased from SpaceX in 2022 for his human spaceflight effort known as the Polaris Program.
“We don’t get the freedom of any time of day to launch but I think it’ll work out to [be] pretty close to dawn, which is very appropriate given the mission,” Isaacman told CNBC’s Investing in Space during an interview last month.
The mission will be commanded by Isaacman, who led the historic Inspiration4 flight in 2021. He will lead a four-person crew: his colleague, Scott Poteet, joins as the pilot, while Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, a pair of SpaceX employees, serve as the flight’s medical officer and mission specialist, respectively.
The multi-day voyage will see the crew free-flying in orbits that the crew hopes will take them far from Earth. The main goal of Polaris Dawn is a planned spacewalk.
“We’re going to a very high altitude that humans haven’t gone to in 50-plus years,” Isaacman said.
Spacewalks have been a regular part of NASA astronaut missions to the ISS for years, but no private company has attempted one before. Isaacman understands the risks involved with the mission but said the team has prepared thoroughly for it.
“The only thing that comes close to that is the vacuum chamber, and that’s where you’re pretty much feeling as close as it’s like to be in the vacuum conditions or space… That definitely gives you the actual sensations of the pressure changes and the temperature changes, as well as just the psychological stressors of being in a very harsh environment,” Isaacman said.
Polaris Dawn will stay in space for up to five days. Day one is all about looking for a time when there’s minimal risk from micrometeorite orbital debris, which will determine exactly when Polaris Dawn will launch. After reaching an orbit of 190 kilometers by 1,200 kilometers, Isaacman said the crew will do extensive checks of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, Resilience.
“It’s really important to know that the vehicle has no faults before going up to 1,400 kilometers” altitude, Isaacman said.
Polaris Dawn will also make early passes through a high radiation zone known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.
“You ideally want to take that at the lowest altitude as you can because even down at 200 kilometers, the radiation level there is substantially higher … Our two or three passes at high altitude through the South Atlantic Anomaly will be almost the entirety of the radiation load on the mission and like an equivalency of three months on the International Space Station,” Isaacman said.
The second day will be dedicated to conducting about 40 science and exploration experiments. In addition, the crew will also prepare for a spacewalk by testing the EVA suits.
“So we can make sure that … there’s nothing unexpected in microgravity versus what we were able to test on Earth,” Isaacman said.
A spacewalk is scheduled for the third day. Isaacman and Gillis will walk out into the space, while Poteet and Menon will remain inside as support. The spacewalk is expected to last two hours from start to finish. Isaacman emphasized that spacewalks are a testing and development process.
“We want to learn as much as we can about the suit and the operation as possible, but we only have so much oxygen and nitrogen to work with,” Isaacman said.
The suits developed by SpaceX are the most important elements and will be tested in real conditions in this mission. Isaacman said the EVA suits are the results of hundreds of hours of testing different materials over the years.
“So our primary goal is to learn as much as we can about the suit,” Isaacman said.
“Everything is about building the next generation. We’re continuing to iterate on this suit design so that SpaceX can have hundreds or thousands someday for the moon, Mars, working in [low Earth orbit], what have you. Building a new EVA suit is no easy task,” he added.
