One of the riskiest private spaceflights in history is scheduled for launch in the early-morning hours on Tuesday (August 27, 2024).
Polaris Dawn’s four-hour launch window opens at 3:38 a.m. ET. It will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The launch will be livestreamed on SpaceX’s and the Polaris Program’s X accounts.
What to know about the mission
Polaris Dawn is the first mission of the Polaris Program, a series of three crewed spaceflights in partnership with SpaceX. They are funded by Shift4 billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is the commander of the mission. Scott “Kidd” Poteet is the pilot, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. And Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon are both mission specialists and are both engineers at SpaceX.
Gillis trains SpaceX astronauts (including the NASA crews who fly on the SpaceX Crew Dragon), while Menon leads mission control and is the development of crew operations for SpaceX. The crew underwent over two years of training in preparation for this mission.
Why the mission will make history
This mission is scheduled to last six days, during which the SpaceX Crew Dragon will take the astronauts farther than humans have traveled since the moon landings, around 1,400 km above the Earth’s surface. (For reference, the ISS orbits around 460 km up.) It will also include the first commercial spacewalk, as well as the first EVA (extravehicular activity, which is NASA’s term for a spacewalk) from a SpaceX Crew Dragon. This will occur at a lower altitude, around 700 km.
Because the Crew Dragon does not have an airlock, the entire spacecraft will have to be vented to perform the spacewalk. All four astronauts will be suited and exposed to the near-vacuum of space. The entire operation is scheduled for about two hours, but the actual EVA will only last about 15 to 20 minutes. The spacecraft will also be carrying a SpaceX Starlink laser link experiment onboard, which uses beams of light to communicate with Starlink satellites—which means the entire EVA will be livestreamed.
This will also be the first time SpaceX’s new pressure suits will be used in space. These have been designed from the ground up, with a new heads-up display, helmet camera, thermal insulation, and a new joint design that will enhance dexterity and mobility. The Crew Dragon has also been modified with a motor hatch to assist with opening, a nitrogen repress system to repressurize the capsule, handholds inside and outside the spacecraft, and more.
During the mission, astronauts will also perform up to 40 experiments in space, as well as raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.