A millionaire, his friend and two SpaceX engineers will fly higher this summer than any human being since 1972

In late 2021, SpaceX launched the first private orbital flight in history. Behind the Inspiration4 mission was Jared Isaacmanthe millionaire founder of the payments company Shift4 Payments.

Three years later, Isaacman has continued to invest most of his resources in SpaceX. Together they have created the Polaris program, which will send increasingly complex missions into space, starting with Polaris Dawn, which is planned for the first civilian spacewalk in history.

The Polaris Dawn mission and its crew

Polaris Dawn is scheduled for this summer, before SpaceX launches NASA’s Crew-9 mission, scheduled for August.

Four American civilians will board the Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft to be launched on a Falcon 9 rocket to an orbit of up to 1,400 kilometers altitude. It is the furthest from Earth that any human being has traveled since the last Apollo mission to the Moon in 1972.

Polaris Dawn will fly above the inner Van Allen belt, which means the Crew Dragon spacecraft will be exposed to a large amount of radiation that it does not normally receive when traveling to the International Space Station, 400 km above sea level. .

After a series of experiments, the four crew members will descend to an orbit of 700 km apogee so that two of them take a space walk. Since the Dragon does not have an airlock, the ship will be depressurized during the two-hour walk. They will all wear the new SpaceX pressure suits that we will talk about below.

“I’m just happy to see history being made,” https://twitter.com/rookisaacman/status/1786937647975244269 when asked why he is funding these space missions. But the businessman will also be the protagonist of this story, since he will play the role of commander in the Polaris Dawn mission, and he is one of the two people who will carry out the spacewalk.

The pilot of the Polaris Dawn mission will be Scott Poteet, a former Air Force fighter pilot and personal friend of Isaacman.

They will be accompanied by two SpaceX operations engineers: Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. Gillis worked with Isaacman during the Inspiration4 mission. Menon also met him then, as her husband, astronaut Anil Menon, worked at Inspiration4 as medical director.

This mission will be much more complex and risky. To begin with, the Crew Dragon ship had to be modified. The docking port has been replaced by a hatch for spacewalking.

In addition, the crew will act as guinea pigs, testing SpaceX’s new extravehicular activity (EVA) suits in flight for the first time.

SpaceX’s new astronaut suits

At first glance, they are very similar to the intravehicular spacesuits (IVA) used by Crew Dragon astronauts to travel to the International Space Station, but the new extravehicular suits (EVA) of SpaceX are, by definition, much more complex.

The reason it is missing typical elements of an astronaut suit, such as the life support backpack, is that it is not finished. The suit has only been in development for two years, and the plan is for it to grow in complexity as the Polaris missions do the same.

The spacewalk of the Polaris Dawn mission will, in fact, be very modest: Jared Isaacman and, later, Sarah Gillis, will look outside the Crew Dragon through a kind of pool ladder called Skywalker. His legs won’t make it out of the ship. The crew will be connected to it through umbilicals through which oxygen will circulate.

Even so, there are many differences between the previous IVA suit and the new EVA: new joints in the arms to facilitate mobility in space, additions for thermal management or greater robustness to be pressurized to 0.35 bars.

The boots are made of the same material used in the interstage of the Falcon 9 and the trunk of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, a material that SpaceX knows exactly what temperatures it can withstand from its years of experience with both vehicles.

The visor is gold because it has a copper layer to protect the crew from solar radiation. It includes a HUD that will project information about the amount of oxygen in the blood, humidity, temperature and the ship’s controls in the crew’s field of vision. The helmet also has a built-in 4K camerawhose images will be broadcast live via Starlink satellites.

And not, https://twitter.com/rookisaacman/status/1787157603224547747. If someone had a squeeze, he would have to do it to them. Luckily, the spacewalk will last less than two hours.

The suit to colonize Mars

Polaris Dawn will be a kind of Gemini program for SpaceX to test the new spacesuit, which is essential in the company’s plans to build bases on the Moon and Mars.

Elon Musk has said that the suit https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1786829373422837974, not only with a life support backpack for oxygen, but also with additions such as a jetpack to move through space. The businessman hopes to pay off the development by manufacturing millions of suits for future interplanetary missions.

Images | Polaris Program / SpaceX

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