PARIS — A Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on the morning of Sept. 15, concluding a five-day private astronaut mission that included the first commercial spacewalk.
Crew Dragon’s Resilience capsule splashed down near the Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico west of Key West, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. ET. The splashdown site was new for SpaceX, which said it was selected after poor weather conditions elsewhere on Florida’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts delayed the launch by nearly two weeks.
The splashdown marked the end of the five-day Polaris Dawn mission, SpaceX’s fifth private astronaut mission. “Polaris Dawn, we’ve completed the mission,” mission commander Jared Isaacman said moments after splashdown.
The Polaris Dawn mission was commanded by Isaacman, the billionaire founder and financier of the Polaris program who also led the Inspiration4 private astronaut mission launched on another Crew Dragon three years ago. Kidd Poteet, a former Air Force pilot, was the mission’s pilot. Two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, were mission specialists.
A falcon 9 Launched the Crew Dragon spacecraft into an elliptical orbit on September 10.initially placing it in an orbit measuring about 190 by 1,200 kilometers. Dragon raised its orbit later in the first day of the mission, reaching an apogee of 1,408.1 kilometers, according to SpaceX. That marked the highest altitude ever for a crewed Earth orbital mission and the highest altitude of any crewed mission since the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon in 1972. Dragon lowered its apogee to about 720 kilometers after about six orbits.
The highlight of the mission was The first commercial spacewalk, which took place on September 12.The four crew members wore SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity (EVA) suits while the cabin was depressurized. Isaacman and Gillis briefly emerged from the hatch in the nose of the Dragon spacecraft on a stand-up spacewalk, to test the suits' performance.
Following the spacewalk, the crew spent their time on nearly 40 experiments, focusing on the effects of the space environment on the human body and testing equipment that could be used to collect such data.
The mission also tested communications with Earth via SpaceX's Starlink broadband constellation, using laser links between satellites. Those tests included A broadcast of Gillis playing the violin. while in orbit, as well as a live downlink with SpaceX employees. Neither Polaris nor SpaceX provided many technical details about those Starlink tests, though SpaceX said the discussion with employees lasted more than 40 minutes and was uninterrupted even as Dragon’s Draco thrusters performed 16 burns.
The future of Polaris
Polaris Dawn was announced as the first in a series of three missions in the Polaris program led and funded by Isaacman. The final mission, he said, would be the first crewed launch of SpaceX's Starship vehicle.
It’s not clear what the second mission will be. At an Aug. 19 briefing to preview Polaris Dawn, Isaacman said only that the second mission would build on Polaris Dawn. “We’re going to learn a lot from Polaris Dawn. It has big, very ambitious goals. We’ll come back with a lot of data, and that’s what will ultimately inform the second mission.”
For a time, SpaceX and Polaris were studying a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to reactivate and possibly repair it. However, In June, NASA announced that it was not pursuing any private servicing options for Hubble. for fear that such a mission could damage Hubble.
NASA has not revealed details about the study that led to that conclusion. Presentations about the study, released after a Freedom of Information Act request by SpaceNews, were almost entirely redacted, citing exemptions protecting confidential commercial information and the “privilege of the deliberative process.” The only information that was not redacted was general information about Hubble itself.
The presentations included an illustration showing how the mission might work, with Dragon's trunk section attached to the base of Hubble. Thrusters on Dragon's nose were in operation, presumably to raise its orbit.
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