SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn Mission Delayed: Key Details on Historic Commercial Spacewalk and Record-Breaking Orbit

As SpaceX, the organizer of the Polaris Dawn mission, announced on the night of Monday to Tuesday, the flight was delayed due to technical problems. A helium leak was detected in the launch system, but as reported on social media, the capsule and rocket are undamaged and the team is ready for launch.

According to SpaceX, the Falcon 9 rocket will launch from the facility NASA in Florida on Wednesday, August 28 at the earliest. 3:38 am Eastern Time (in our country it will be 9:38 am). If conditions are unfavorable, it is possible to start the mission also at 5:23 am and 7:09 am local time, or on Thursday, August 29, at the same times. The mission was scheduled to launch on Tuesday.

Four astronauts will take part in the mission: billionaire and entrepreneur Jared Issacman, retired US Air Force lieutenant Scott “Kidd” Poteet, engineer Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon – medical officer.

As planned, the mission will last five days. During the flight, the crew will perform 36 experiments and scientific research. Among them, he will take magnetic resonance imaging pictures of astronauts’ brains and try to take X-ray pictures without using a camera, using natural radiation streams that move in space.

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Astronauts also plan to test sending messages using laser pulses, instead of radio signals, between the Crew Dragon capsule and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.

The Polaris Dawn mission is also expected to set a new altitude record for a crewed capsule in Earth orbit, reaching a height of 1,400 kilometers. This is more than twice as high as the mission that put the Hubble Space Telescope in Earth’s orbit. The highest orbital flight to date was made by NASA astronauts Richard Gordon and Charles Conrad on Gemini 11 in 1966, reaching an altitude of 1,369 km.

One of the main elements of the mission was planned for his third day. That’s when Jared Issacman and Sarah Gillis will make the first commercial spacewalk in history, at an altitude of about 700 km above the Earth. The event will also be a test for SpaceX EVA uniform suits made of new materials with thermal insulation. Astronauts will also wear 3D printed helmets that include an additional visor, a head-up display (HUD) and cameras that provide information about the suit’s pressure, temperature and relative humidity.

Although there is place Only a pair of astronauts walk around, the whole crew has to wear spacesuits. This is because the Crew Dragon capsule has no ventilator, so its interior will be open to empty space. Last week at a press conference, Issacman announced that the entire operation would take about two hours.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three flights planned by SpaceX that will test the technology used in manned flights.