Talk about an audacious privately funded space mission. All four Polaris Dawn Crew members will don newly designed spacesuits more than 435 miles above Earth, then open the hatch of their SpaceX Dragon capsule — which has no airlock.
Or as mission commander Jared Isaacman describes it, you throw off the safety of your vehicle — and “your suit becomes your spacecraft.”
“They’ve never really tested these costumes in space before. And the exposure to the space environment of each one is reminiscent of the early Gemini missions,” Dan Platt said. Florida Institute of Technology’s Spaceport Education Center in Titusville.
“When they did their space missions, they opened the door of the Gemini capsule. One crew member was sitting, probably wearing a seat belt, so he wouldn’t float — neither of them would go out. And then the other one would stick his head out and try to move a little bit in there,” Platt said.
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“It was very early on, and nobody realized that you needed things like handrails to hold on to. Otherwise, you’re not really going to have any use in a microgravity environment,” he said.
The unique Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to launch at 3:38 a.m. EDT Tuesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. If needed, backup release opportunities will be available on Tuesday at 5:23 am and 7:09 am. Florida Today’s space team at Floridatoday.com/space will provide live coverage beginning approximately four hours before liftoff.
“Polaris has already been delayed for more than a year because of all the really incredible technical problems that had to be solved to get us to this point where we’re so ready to go — at the mercy of the weather. Always,” said Emanuel Urgieta, vice chair of aerospace medicine at the University of Central Florida.
“But I think it’s going to be a very historic mission,” Urgieta said.
First spacewalk attempt from Dragon capsule
Promising “a new era of commercial space exploration,” the roughly five-day Polaris Dawn orbital flight will feature the world’s first all-civilian spacewalk using SpaceX-designed, first-generation EVA (Extravehicular Activity) spacesuits. The crew will be the first to perform a spacewalk from a Dragon capsule — and the spacewalk will be broadcast live.
Polaris Dawn team members Isaacman; pilot Scott “Kid” Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew F-16 Fighting Falcons; and two SpaceX lead space operations engineers: Mission Specialist/Medical Officer Anna Menon and Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis.
The spacewalk should take about two hours from ejecting the Dragon to repressurizing the capsule, Isaacman said. The two spacewalkers will each spend 15 to 20 minutes outside the spacecraft.
“We’re going to completely evacuate the vehicle. The Dragon doesn’t have an airlock. 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 will be inside the vehicle. And two, in a row, will go outside the vehicle. When we’re out there, we’re going to use various mobility aids designed by the SpaceX team — it’ll be like us. ‘We’re doing a little dance.’
“And the idea is to learn as much as we can about the suit and feed that back to the engineers to inform future suit design evolutions,” he said.
Why launch so late at night? Isaacman said the SpaceX crew chose the window to help reduce risks from micrometeoroids and orbital debris. At an average speed of 22,000 mph, even a paint fleck just 1 cm in size can hit with tremendous force, according to NASA.
“For a spacewalk, we will divert the vehicle to protect the crew members,” Gillis told the media during a briefing on Monday.
Spacewalk named ‘A Dangerous Adventure’
During a media event on Monday, crew members expressed hope for an exciting spacewalk, citing their training and the work of SpaceX engineers. Isaacman said the latter conducted a series of “paranoid reviews” and risk briefings across a range of work parameters.
“EVA is a risky adventure. But again, we’ve done all the preparations. We’ve done capsule testing. We’ve done suit testing. We’ve done hyperbaric chambers. We’ve really done all the work to prepare for this,” he said. Bill Kerstenmeier, SpaceX vice president of construction and flight reliability. He was previously NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations.
“You know, we’ve built on what the legacy of NASA is. But I think we’ve expanded the legacy of NASA a little bit more,” Kerstenmeyer said.
Gillis said the SpaceX crew upgraded the Dragon life-support system to provide oxygen to the four astronauts during the spacewalk. Before a spacewalk, he said, the capsule would slowly depressurize astronauts to pull nitrogen from their bodies and reduce the risk of decompression sickness. Team members trained wearing oxygen masks during a two-day simulation inside a vacuum chamber. NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
“Interesting mission. I think it’s great that we’re doing these things and pushing the envelope here. There’s talk of SpaceX and this Polaris program, trying to get NASA to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. A very interesting case for future work,” Platt said.
“I don’t know if NASA is going to buy it. But they’re really looking outside the realm of day-to-day operations — they’re taking some pictures and saying, ‘Hey, I’m coming in. Space.’ They’re actually trying to do something worthwhile, and kudos to them for doing that,” he said.
Polaris Dawn On-Orbit Chart
- Day 1: Launch it and go through its innards Earth’s Van Allen radiation belt 1,400 km from the surface. It marked the highest altitude reached by astronauts since Apollo 17, the final lunar mission in December 1972.
- Day 2: Prepare for a spacewalk during the appropriate “Mobility Demo”; Descending into a 700 km cruise orbit.
- Day 3: Wear spacesuits, perform leak tests and conduct spacewalks.
- Day 4: Test a Starlink Laser based communication system.
- Day 5: Prepare for atmospheric regeneration.
- Day 6: Re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splash off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean at one of seven sites.
For the latest news and launch schedules from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.
Rick Neal Today he is a space reporter in Florida. Contact Neil[email protected]. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1