The first spacewalk experiment of civilians in spacesuits will be attempted with U.S. space company SpaceX.
The mission, named Polaris Dawn, is the first flight of a private spaceflight project called the Polaris Program, led by billionaire and aircraft pilot Jared Isaacman, 41.
According to NASA and other sources, SpaceX’s space capsule “dragon” for the Polaris Dawn mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with four civilian astronauts on board on the morning of the 26th. The launch is scheduled from 3:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. on the same day.
Polaris Dunn is led by Jared Isaacman, CEO of the U.S. credit card payment company Shift4. “We are excited to start this mission after more than two years of training,” Isaacman said in a press release. “We will aim to imagine and inspire what mankind can achieve on Earth and beyond.”
In this mission, the Dragon capsule carrying four civilian astronauts will fly an oval orbit of up to 1,400km (870 miles). According to Polaris, 1400km is more than three times higher than the flight orbit of the International Space Station (ISS), and it is the highest point for humans to fly in half a century since NASA’s last Apollo program in 1972.
The flight’s space orbit passes through a part of the radiation belt called the Van Allen radiation belt. According to NASA, the band, which starts at an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers, is a section where powerful energy particles emitted from the sun are concentrated and interact with the Earth’s atmosphere to form a dangerous radiation band.
Civilian astronauts stay in space for about five days in a space capsule, conducting more than 40 kinds of research and experiments. The most important experiment among them is spacewalk. An attempt by a civilian to fly in space is unprecedented in the history of human space exploration.
Civilian astronauts who participated in the flight will be in space at an altitude of 700 kilometers (435 miles) wearing SpaceX’s newly developed Extra-Vehicle Activity (EVA) space suit. According to CNN, only two of the four astronauts, including Isaacman, will leave the spacecraft tied to a rope. The key is how well SpaceX’s advanced space suit can protect the human body. Isaacman also led SpaceX’s first civilian spaceflight, Inspiration4, in 2021. Although the amount he paid SpaceX at the time is unknown, his wealth is known to be $2.3 billion.
The following year, he announced the Polaris program, which aims to expand the limits of human spaceflights, signaling three spaceflights with SpaceX. This is the first Polaris Dawn, and the other two missions have not yet been disclosed.
Sarah Gillis, a mission specialist, is SpaceX’s chief space operations engineer who oversees the astronaut training program. She also has a unique background of majoring in classical music and being a violinist.
Anna Menon, a mission specialist and medical officer, is also SpaceX’s chief space operations engineer who is in charge of overall mission operations and communications. Menon is married to a NASA astronaut and has two children, and she also wrote a children’s storybook, Kiss from Space, for her children. She will also have time to read the book during the flight.
Scott Kid Forty, a pilot in the U.S. Air Force who served for 20 years and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He also participated in Inspiration 4 with Isaacman as a supervisor, but he did not participate in the flight at the time. Both female pilots aboard the Dragon are employees of SpaceX.
Over the past two years, the astronauts have been trained in a variety of ways, including hundreds of hours of dragon boarding simulations, skydiving, survival training, aircraft control, and high-altitude experience, Polaris said.
JENNIFER KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
