How high? Record orbit and spacewalk among goals for new SpaceX mission
A new milestone in private spaceflight is set to begin this week with a SpaceX mission that will include the first commercial spacewalk. Called Polaris Dawn, the mission also aims to send a four-person crew to an orbit with an altitude of about 870 miles, the highest orbit since the Apollo moon missions.
The Dragon spacecraft launched 5:23 a.m. today aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 from pad 39A in Florida after a two-week series of technological and weather-related delays.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three human spaceflights planned for the Polaris Program and will include a battery of experiments that could inform human readiness for extended space travel, including missions to Mars. The mission is led − and funded by − Polaris head Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of electronic payment company Shift4. In 2021, Isaacman led and flew Inspiration4, the first privately funded flight to orbit Earth.
Isaacman will be joined by mission pilot and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott Poteet, who also flew on Inspiration4, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who will serve as mission specialists.
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How far up will Crew Dragon orbit?
The Crew Dragon will orbit Earth about eight times before climbing to an orbital point 870 miles above the planet, more than three times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station. That will put the crew in the inner regions of the Van Allen radiation belt, a region of trapped charged particles in Earth's magnetosphere.
After 10 hours, the Crew Dragon will descend to 435 miles, where it will remain for the rest of the mission. At this distance, the crew will depressurize the capsule, perform the spacewalk Thursday and carry out 38 research experiments aimed at advancing human health in space.
Polaris Dawn will mark the first civilian spacewalk. All spacewalks until now have been by astronauts from government agencies from the U.S., the former Soviet Union and Russia, the European Space Agency, Canada and China. More than 270 spacewalks alone have been carried out outside the space station since 2000.
When will the spacewalk happen?
The crew successfully launched 5:23 a.m. today EDT aboard Falcon 9. On the six-day mission schedule, the spacewalk and related livestream are set for Day 3 of the mission schedule on Thursday.
Crew Dragon is scheduled to return on Day 6 of the mission on Sunday. The vessel will splash down at one of seven sites off Florida.
Contributing: Eric Lagatta, Paste BN; Reuters
SOURCES SpaceX; Reuters; Space.com