SpaceX postpones historic mission with first private spacewalk

Kennedy Space Center, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 28th Aug, 2024) SpaceX on Tuesday once again postponed its attempt to launch a daring orbital expedition with a civilian crew that aims to perform the first walk space by private citizens.

The Polaris Dawn mission, organized by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, had been launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a four-hour window earlier Wednesday.

But SpaceX announced Tuesday that it was postponing launch plans “due to expected unfavorable weather in the Dragon splashdown areas off the coast of Florida,” in a message on X.

An earlier attempt on Tuesday was scrapped due to a helium leak in a line connecting the tower to the rocket.

Riding atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the SpaceX Dragon capsule is poised to reach a peak altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) — higher than any crewed mission in more than half a century, since it was Apollo.

Mission Commander Isaacman will lead his four-member team through the centerpiece of the mission: the first spacewalk performed by non-professional astronauts, equipped with SpaceX’s newly developed extravehicular activity (EVA) fancy suits.

The team is mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel; Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, a principal engineer of space operations at SpaceX; and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon, also a principal engineer of space operations at SpaceX.

The quartet underwent more than two years of training in preparation for the reference mission, recording hundreds of hours on simulators, such as skydiving, centrifuge training, scuba diving, and summiting an Ecuadorian volcano.

Polaris Dawn will be the first of three missions under the Polaris program, a collaboration between Isaacman, the founder of the technology company Shift4 Payments, and SpaceX.

Isaacman declined to reveal his total investment in the project, although reports suggest he paid about $200 million for the September 2021 SpaceX Inspiration4 mission, the first all-civilian orbital mission.

Polaris Dawn will reach its highest altitude on its first day, briefly venturing into the Van Allen radiation belt, a region full of high-energy charged particles that can pose risks to human health for extended periods .

On the third day, the crew will don their state-of-the-art EVA spacesuits – equipped with heads-up displays, helmet cameras and advanced joint mobility systems – and take turns venturing out of their spacecraft in pairs.

Each spend 15 to 20 minutes in space, 435 miles above the surface of the Earth.

Also on his to-do list are tests of laser-based satellite communications between the spacecraft and Starlink, SpaceX’s constellation of more than 6,000 Internet satellites, in an attempt to boost space communications speeds, and driving nearly 40 science experiments.

These include tests with contact lenses embedded with microelectronics to continuously monitor changes in eye pressure and shape.

After six days in space, the mission will conclude with the splashdown off the coast of Florida.