Four astronauts have been launched into space, before carrying out the first privately-funded spacewalk, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday. It marks the start of the SpaceX’s five-day Polaris Dawn mission.
Due to “unfavourable weather” the blast-off was delayed for almost two hours.
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The four crew onboard include billionaire Jared Isaacman, retired Air Force Thunderbirds pilot Lt Colonel Scott Poteet, and two SpaceX engineers–Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.
Polaris Dawn is go for launch pic.twitter.com/tx1gUyZjZr
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 10, 2024
This is the first privately funded spacewalk. Earlier, only government-funded astronauts have carried out spacewalks.
Follow Dragon and Polaris Dawn during their mission → pic.twitter.com/xFJlKEUEmQ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 10, 2024
The spacewalk is scheduled for late Wednesday or Thursday, midway through the five-day flight. Follow the mission here:
SpaceX was founded to make life multiplanetary. Missions like Polaris Dawn help advance the development of the technologies necessary to enable a more exciting future pic.twitter.com/VeNfpwmf9I
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 10, 2024
The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half.
Learn how SpaceX designed and prepared the Polaris Dawn crew for the first commercial spacewalk pic.twitter.com/HRQlKPs8io
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 10, 2024
Isaacman and Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch and also test their white-black-trimmed custom suits and see how they’ll hold up in the harsh vacuum.
Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no jetpack showboating and no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-metre) tethers. Only NASA’s suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.
Pilot Scott Kidd Poteet and SpaceX’s Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from inside. Like SpaceX’s previous astronaut flights, this one will end with a splashdown off the Florida coast.
SpaceX teamed up with Isaacman to pay for spacesuit development and associated costs.
William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX vice president said that we are starting to push the frontiers with the private sector.
As SpaceX astronaut trainers, Gillis and Menon helped Isaacman and his previous team and NASA’s professional crews prepare for their rides.
