Ready to join the field of private astronaut missions, Polaris Dawn makes history on August 26 with the first-ever commercial spacewalk. The four-man crew is set to travel on a five-day journey atop the SpaceX Crew Dragon to heights of up to 1,400 km, nearly the highest altitude held by any crewed mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.
So the crew reached Kennedy Space Center on August 19, and final visible preparations continued there. With the support of billionaire Jared Isaacman, this mission is going to conduct laser links inter-satellite with SpaceX Starlink space vehicles and have on board 40 experiments. But it is going to be a walk in space, an outright first for private missions and Crew Dragon.
Also, highlighted that it had been important to him that the new EVA suits developed by SpaceX be tested. “It feels like a huge honor to have that opportunity to test it out on this flight,” he said. The spacewalk, scheduled for the third day of the mission, is planned to have two astronauts briefly exit the hatch to test the suits.
SpaceX engineer and mission specialist Sarah Gillis detailed the vigorous prebreathing protocol that will start just an hour after launch to prepare for the spacewalk. Mobility tests with the donned suits are set for day two onboard the spacecraft. During the spacewalk, EV1 and EV2 astronauts will perform hands-free demos with their feet strapped to mobility aids on the capsule.
The development of the spacesuit and planning for the spacewalk has been central to the mission. “The EVA probably makes up the majority of the development for Polaris Dawn,” said Isaacman, who knows the risks involved. According to SpaceX vice president Bill Gerstenmaier, they did extensive testing and had protocols to mitigate such risks.
The mission flight profile involves an initial orbit with a perigee of 190 kilometers and an apogee of 1,200 kilometers, which will then be raised to 1,400. After 10 hours at this altitude, the spacecraft will lower its apogee to 700 kilometers for the spacewalk. The following day there will be a Starlink demonstration, and on the final day, research projects will be done before reentry.
In February 2022, Isaacman and SpaceX announced the Polaris program of three missions, with increasing complexity, culminating in the first crewed launch of Starship. The launch date has slipped from an initial late 2022 projection because the schedule, which put the first mission only ten months after the announcement, was extremely ambitious, with long lead times involved in developing the spacesuits and Starlink laser inter-satellite links.
Comprising pilot Scott Poteet, mission specialist Sarah Gillis, and mission specialist/medical officer Anna Menon, the crew has gone through rigorous training—going from simulators to scuba diving and mountain climbing. While Isaacman wouldn’t disclose how much the mission is going to cost him, he does say that it will raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, like his Inspiration4 mission did in 2021.
Bill Gerstenmaier recognized the importance of the mission when he made an analogy that the speed of the development looked a lot like the pace during the early Apollo days. “It’s time to go out, and it’s time to explore. It’s time to do these big things and move forward,” he stated.
The Polaris Dawn mission, ready to place history at its very tip of the spear on the very first launch, is a testimonial to the ever-expanding frontier of private space exploration advancing human possibility beyond the atmosphere of the Earth.