The four-member crew of what will be a historic space flight arrived in Florida on Monday. Against a clear blue sky and summer humidity as a backdrop, the quartet of astronauts stepped out of camouflaged Dassault Alpha jets owned by mission commander Jared Isaacman.
The crew, which also includes retired U.S. Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and two SpaceX space operations lead engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, will not only fly farther from Earth than anyone since the Apollo era, but is also set to perform the first commercial spacewalk.
“It’s been two and a half years since we announced the Polaris Program and Polaris Dawn,” Isaacman said. “It’s been a really exciting development and training journey.”
The mission is the first of three flights that make up the Polaris program. The parameters of the second mission have not been detailed publicly, but Isaacman said from the beginning that the third mission will be the first crewed flight of a SpaceX Starship rocket.
“With twice the thrust of the Saturn V, it could very well be the 737 of human spaceflight one day, but it will certainly be the vehicle that takes humans back to the Moon and then on to Mars and beyond,” Isaacman said. “Each of these missions will be filled with a number of objectives that aim to accelerate SpaceX’s vision of making life multiplanetary, but you can always count on us, as with this mission, to use every minute of the available time for science and research, as well as supporting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”
Isaacman and his crewmates have four main goals over the five days they will spend in orbit:
- Achieving a record altitude in Earth orbit at an apogee of 1,400 km (879 mi)
- Conducting the first commercial spacewalk using SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity (EVA) suits
- Conduct a Starlink technology demonstration aboard the Dragon spacecraft
- Conduct around 40 experiments from 20 partner research institutions
Menon said the scientific data collected during the mission does not end when the crew splashes down off the coast of Florida at the conclusion of their mission.
“When we get back, the SpaceX recovery ship will pick us up and then we’ll spend some time doing science, research and reconnecting with our families,” Menon said.
The mission, scheduled to launch at 3:38 a.m. EDT (0738 UTC) on Aug. 26, will launch into a 190 x 1,200 km (118 x 746 mi) orbit. The first day in orbit will include rising from Dragon’s apogee and passing through the inner regions of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belt, an area where additional charged particles, much of it originating in the solar wind, are found.
The region was first discovered in 1958 by astrophysicist James Van Allen and was recently discovered by the Apollo 17 astronauts during their return trip from the Moon in 1972.
“We have a lot to learn from this, in terms of human health, science and research. If we ever get to Mars, we would love to come back and be healthy enough to tell people about it,” Isaacman said. “So I think it’s worth getting some exposure to that environment.”
“It also affects the architecture of the vehicle because, in general, vehicles don’t like radiation. That’s why we’re going to stay there for as little time as possible to collect the data we want.”
Beyond the benefit to human research this will bring, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, said the mission's dynamic flight profile will also help the company certify its Crew Dragon spacecraft beyond five flights.
“The high altitude will allow us to be exposed to this high radiation environment, which will test a lot of avionics systems and their ability to recover,” Gerstenmaier said. “We built a lot of automatic sequences to handle that, but we’ll see how it actually works. We’ll also get a chance to look at laser communication, which I think is a big step forward.”
That laser communication is a demonstration of Starlink internet connectivity aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft. During his remarks, Gillis showed an image of a Starlink WiFi router nested in the capsule. The Starlink demonstration is scheduled for the fourth day of the mission.
“You might think that getting internet is as easy as flipping a switch and turning it on, but that’s not the case. We’re talking about a laser that sends information to a Starlink satellite that’s moving at orbital speed (over 17,000 mph), coming down to Earth and then coming back,” Gillis said. “It’s been an incredible development effort by the SpaceX team and I’ve personally taken a special interest in this development effort and we have a special message that we’re going to share with the world using this technology.”
First commercial spacewalk
One of the highlights of the mission will be when the crew takes Dragon into the atmosphere and performs the first commercial spacewalk. The entire operation will last about two hours, during which both Isaacman and Gillis will exit the vehicle, one at a time, while remaining attached to a tether about 12 feet long.
Gillis said the suit went through many modifications and iterations to arrive at the final version that will withstand extravehicular activity on the third day of flight.
“When we first started, we came in every day to train and pretty much every day when we came in there was a different suit. It had a different glove, a different elbow, a different shoulder and there was a constant iteration of the suit components with the team that was in charge of testing and collecting data,” Gillis said. “However, in parallel with that, we also had to develop the training for that suit.”
Gillis described a special harness that simulated weightlessness inside the EVA suit, as they did not have the ability to constantly put the suit in a pool for testing. He said it also underwent thermal vacuum testing to ensure it could withstand the harsh environment of space.
“We’ve covered everything from life cycle testing, pressure testing, MMOD testing, extreme heat and cold temperature testing, a full ESD campaign, and flammability testing. It’s been an impressive amount of work by the SpaceX team to test this suit for flight,” Gillis said. “As a crew, we’ve probably spent over 100 hours in this suit at this point… We’re really looking forward to testing this first generation of suit.”
He noted that during the spacewalk, the Dragon spacecraft will be oriented in a way that will shield crew members from direct sunlight.
Isaacman said that while he and Gillis will not float freely outside the spacecraft, they will be fully out of the vehicle during the spacewalk. He said they will be “well above where the hatch is” during the operation.
“We have a hands-free demonstration where only our feet will be used as a mobility aid – we won’t be floating,” Isaacman said. “It takes a lot of effort to move around in the suit when it’s pressurized. What seems like very heavy clothing becomes super stiff when it’s pressurized.
“Therefore, you have to be very deliberate with your movements and make good use of mobility aids.”
Gerstenmaier, who came to SpaceX after a decades-long career at NASA, said it's been a fun process creating the suits and now being about to see them in practical use. He described the process as one of leveraging NASA's knowledge and “then taking it a little bit further in other areas,” making sure to share lessons learned along the way.
“This pace of development that we can achieve at SpaceX is very similar to what was required in the early days of Apollo,” Gerstenmaier said. “We have the opportunity to do it again, where we are really starting to push the boundaries with the private sector and learn new things that we couldn’t learn if we stayed in the risk-free environment here on Earth.”
“It’s time to get out there. It’s time to explore. It’s time to do these great things and move on.”
