Billionaire Jared Isaacman may not have to wait too much longer to get back to space as SpaceX aims to launch his Polaris Dawn mission by the end of the month from Kennedy Space Center.
Liftoff is now slated for no earlier than Aug. 26, according to an update Wednesday from the Polaris Program’s social media. A SpaceX Falcon 9 aims to take off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A sending Isaacman and three crewmates riding in the Crew Dragon Resilience, making its third spaceflight after debuting on Crew-1 in 2020 and then following up with Inspiration4 in 2021.
“Things are happening, we’re back on-track for launch!:” posted Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX employee and one of the three other crewmates joining Isaacman.
We are targeting no earlier than August 26 for the launch of Polaris Dawn pic.twitter.com/tkkiRke64a
— Polaris (@PolarisProgram) August 7, 2024
Isaacman first made it to space on the Inspiration4 mission in 2021, a three-day orbital flight that raised more than $240 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital on what became the first all-commercial crew of a human spaceflight.
“Wishing you a safe journey as you gear up for space! Thanks for helping us save lives,” St. Jude posted to its X account Wednesday.
For Polaris Dawn, in addition to mission specialist Gillis, also joining Isaacman will be a second SpaceX employee, specialist and medical officer Anna Menon. The final crew member is one of Isaacman’s friends, Scott Poteet, who is taking on the role of mission pilot. Poteet is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and demonstration pilot who flew with the Air Force Thunderbirds. He acted as mission director for the Inspiration4 flight.
Isaacman footed the bills for Inspiration4 and now the Polaris Program after making a fortune as the founder and CEO of Shift4 payments, a credit card processing company.
In 2022, he announced the Polaris Program, a set of up to three more spaceflights with SpaceX beginning with Polaris Dawn flight, originally aiming for launch by the end of that year. But the central facet of this first Polaris flight, the first commercial tethered spacewalk, led to delays as SpaceX had to develop spacesuits that could withstand the vacuum of space for all four Polaris Dawn passengers.
All things were falling into place for a late July launch, though, but NASA’s Crew-9 spaceflight to the International Space Station took precedence, forcing Polaris Dawn to wait its turn.
NASA lays out plan to send Starliner astronauts home on SpaceX Dragon if needed
But issues with Boeing’s Starliner at the ISS this summer have forced NASA to delay Crew-9 until at least late September, allowing the Polaris Dawn flight to queue up. The Polaris Dawn launch would also need to go up before the KSC launch pad’s required preparations in early September ahead of a Falcon Heavy launch in October of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission.
This would mark SpaceX’s 14th crewed flight among its fleet of four Crew Dragon spacecraft, and third so far in 2024 having already launched the Axiom Space Ax-3 mission in January and Crew-8 mission in March. It has two more after Polaris Dawn, with Crew-9 in September and Axiom Space’s Ax-4 in November followed by the Crew-10 mission targeting February 2025.
Isaacman would become only the second person to fly for a second time on a Crew Dragon following former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría’s two flights commanding two of the three commercial Axiom Space missions so far to the ISS. To date SpaceX has flown 50 people to space on its Crew Dragons.
Polaris Dawn would be the fifth all-commercial crew augmenting the nine missions Dragon has made for NASA so far. The Polaris Program, though, has an aim to push the boundaries of commercial spaceflight in tandem with SpaceX’s goal to eventually build a colony on Mars.
Part of that is the tethered spacewalk, during which Isaacman will be joined by Gillis outside the spacecraft. But Resilience doesn’t have an airlock, which means all four crew will need the special suits to endure the vacuum of space as the entire cabin will lack an atmosphere.
The suits are similar to the intravehicular activity suits that have been worn on the 13 previous crewed Dragon flights. The new extravehicular activity suits have helmets with visors that include digital heads-up displays, allowing the wearer to know the suit’s pressure, temperature and relative humidity.
The spacewalk is the second of three major goals for the five-day flight plan. The first is to take Dragon to an altitude much higher than previous flights — flying up to 870 miles above Earth on an elliptical orbit. The record for orbital altitude for a crewed mission was set In 1966, when NASA astronauts Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon flew on the Gemini 11 to 853 miles.
The International Space Station orbits Earth at about 250 miles.
After that’s accomplished, the Dragon will head back down to about 430 miles altitude where the one-hour spacewalk will happen. Isaacman and Gillis’ suits will be tethered the entire time.
While two will venture out, having all four exposed to the vacuum of space has never been done before. SpaceX is replacing the cupola window feature that Resilience flew with on Inspiration4 with an exit hatch instead. After the spacewalk, the crew will have to repressurize the capsule.
The final main objective of the mission is to test laser-based communication using Starlink satellites, but the five days will also be filled with about 40 science experiments.
Details for the second Polaris Program launch has yet to be nailed down, but the third launch is slated to be the first human spaceflight of SpaceX’s in-development Starship and Super Heavy.
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