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Tencent Technology News, August 18, according to foreign media reports, SpaceX is preparing for a private space mission to be launched at the end of August, which marks the company's first attempt to allow privately funded astronauts to walk in space.

This flight, code-named the Polaris Dawn mission, is the first of three space flight plans customized by billionaire and shift4 founder Jared Isaacman for SpaceX in 2022. It will be launched from Florida in the early morning of August 26, local time in the United States.

Isaacman said in an interview not long ago: "Although the launch time is strictly limited, we expect it to take place before dawn, which coincides with the name and vision of the mission."

Isaacman will once again serve as commander for this mission, just as he successfully led the historic "Inspiration 4" flight in 2021. He will once again lead a crew of three, including veteran colleague Scott Poteet as pilot, and SpaceX employees Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis as the flight's medical officer and mission specialist, respectively.

The multi-day trip has no specific destination, but is a free flight designed to explore the vastness of space beyond Earth. "We're going to push boundaries and reach altitudes that haven't been reached by humans in more than 50 years," Isaacman said.

But the heart of the Polaris Dawn mission is a spacewalk, a feat traditionally reserved for NASA.NASA) is an integral part of astronaut missions, especially during maintenance operations on the International Space Station. However, private industry has not yet entered this field.

Spacewalk is also called extravehicular activity, or EVA for short. Isaacman knows that spacewalk means they will be surrounded by extreme environments and face life and death tests, which is why they continue to conduct high-intensity training.

He further elaborated: "The closest experience to space walking is vacuum chamber training, which almost reproduces the vacuum and extreme conditions of space, allowing people to experience the rapid changes in pressure and temperature, as well as the tremendous psychological pressure caused by extreme environments."

Attempting first privately funded spacewalk

Isaacman also gave a brief overview of the Polaris Dawn’s schedule.

On the first day, the mission team will select a time window with the lowest risk of meteorites and orbital debris to determine the exact timing of the launch. Once in the initial scheduled orbit, the astronauts will immediately conduct a comprehensive and detailed inspection of the SpaceX manned Dragon spacecraft. Isaacman emphasized: "Before the spacecraft climbs to an altitude of 1,400 kilometers, it is crucial to ensure that it is in the best condition and has no faults."

In addition, the spacecraft will also cross the South Atlantic Anomaly, where radiation levels are higher, ahead of time. Isaacman pointed out: "Ideally, the test should be conducted in the lowest possible orbit, because even at an altitude of 200 kilometers, radiation levels have increased significantly. We expect to cross the South Atlantic Anomaly two or three times at high altitude, which will bear almost all of the radiation load of this mission, equivalent to the radiation accumulation of the International Space Station for three consecutive months."

On the second day, the focus will turn to scientific exploration of the Polaris Dawn program, with a total of about 40 scientific experiments to be performed. At the same time, the crew will also make final preparations for the spacewalk, including a comprehensive test of the EVA spacesuit.

"This is to ensure that the suit behaves the same way in microgravity as it does on the ground, without any unexpected problems," Isaacman said.

The third day will be the most important space walk.

Lasts for two hours, two people go out of the cabin and two people provide support

Regarding the executors of the spacewalk, Isaacman revealed: "The four of us will participate in this feat together - although there will be no traditional airlock, the spacecraft will be evacuated to a vacuum state." At that time, Isaacman and Gillis will step out of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, while Poteet and Menon will stay in the cabin to provide support.

The EVA activity is expected to last two hours, and Isaacman emphasized that it is "focused on testing and development." He said: "We aim to deeply explore the space suit and its operating performance, but are limited by the limited supply of oxygen and nitrogen."

The spacewalk will be broadcast live by the Polaris Dawn program, with the mission commander noting that there will be "numerous cameras" inside and outside the module.

Testing the new space suit

The core equipment that makes EVA possible is the space suit carefully developed by SpaceX. In recent years, the company has continuously upgraded the original simple black and white IVA (intravelinum activity suit, used in emergencies) to a powerful EVA space suit. Isaacman introduced that these space suits are the result of hundreds of hours of testing on a variety of materials over many years, "so our first task is to deeply explore the performance limits of this suit."

Isaacman added: "This move is aimed at the future. We will continue to optimize the design of space suits to ensure that SpaceX can provide hundreds of efficient space suits for missions such as the moon, Mars and low-Earth orbit in the future. At present, creating a new EVA space suit is still a complex and arduous task."

The goal of the Polaris Dawn mission is to push the boundaries of private spaceflight, and just as Isaacman's first trip to orbit did, he hopes this mission will capture the public's imagination.

"That's the power of it being inspiring," Isaacman said. "Anything that's outside the norm of the past 20 or 30 years sparks interest and curiosity in people, and makes them think, 'If what we see today is so amazing, what will it be like tomorrow or next year?'"