news

Elon Musk's SpaceX is set to organize the first private spacewalk, which will be one of the company's riskiest operations yet.

The spacewalk will be carried out by two members of a four-person team to test a new spacesuit developed by SpaceX.

The mission, called Polaris Dawn, is funded by technology billionaire Jared Isaacman, who also funded a SpaceX flight about three years ago. Mission participants and SpaceX executives said the flight will help advance the company's space exploration goals, such as Musk's long-cherished manned mission to Mars.

Polaris Dawn is set to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday. The spacewalk is scheduled to take place a few days later. Details on the timing of the spacewalk will be announced after launch, a mission spokesman said.

Extravehicular activities (as spacewalks are formally known) have long been performed by government astronauts working on official space agency projects. The first spacewalk was performed by a Soviet cosmonaut in 1965, and a few months later by American astronaut Ed White during NASA's Gemini 4 mission. Since then, NASA astronauts have donned spacesuits to explore the moon, repair the Hubble Telescope and maintain the International Space Station.

But spacewalks are risky for astronauts who must stay in a suit that protects them from the vacuum of space. Debris in space flies by at about 17,000 miles per hour and can be extremely hot. In June, NASA said a spacewalk on the International Space Station (ISS) ended prematurely because of a leak in the spacesuit worn by NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson.

"You lose all the safety and security that the spacecraft provides," Isaacman said during a recent briefing on the mission. "Your spacesuit becomes your spacecraft."

Completing the risky Polaris Dawn mission would mark a powerful precedent for SpaceX, which already plays a leading role in rocket launches, ferrying astronauts for NASA and operating the Starlink satellite communications network.

NASA said Saturday that in a subsequent mission, SpaceX will help return two astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station since early June. The two astronauts, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, were unable to return to Earth from the International Space Station because of NASA concerns about the safety of the Boeing spacecraft that sent them to the International Space Station.

In addition to the spacewalks, the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission will send astronauts further into space than humans have been in decades, according to a statement from the Polaris Dawn mission. While SpaceX has flown other missions with private astronauts, this mission with private astronauts performing spacewalks has little precedent, both from a commercial and regulatory perspective.

In addition to Isaacman, the other three participants in the flight mission are former Air Force pilot Scott Poteet, SpaceX operations engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.

The spacewalk, which will involve all four astronauts, is expected to take place while the Crew Dragon is orbiting Earth at an altitude of about 435 miles above sea level.

The spacecraft has no airlocks, so all crew members will don spacesuits and “depressurize” the spacecraft. Once that’s done, the crew will open a hatch on the Crew Dragon, exposing all crew members and the interior of the spacecraft to the vacuum of space.

A spokesperson for the mission said Isaacman and Gillis plan to be out of the spacecraft for about 15 to 20 minutes. They will perform a number of demonstrations to see how the suits perform. Neither will completely detach from the spacecraft and float freely, but their hands or feet will remain connected to the spacecraft at all times.

The four-member crew has trained for skydiving and spent time in a vacuum chamber at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston since the mission was announced in February 2022. The four have spent about 2,000 hours training in a flight simulator and practicing adapting to symptoms associated with hypoxia, the body's response to low oxygen levels.

Meanwhile, the SpaceX team has been hard at work on the suits. Gillis said at a recent briefing that the suits feature a new system to ensure flexible joints, a copper-tin face shield that provides sun and heat protection, and other technologies. She said SpaceX has put the Crew Dragon spacecraft through intensive testing to prepare it for the vacuum of space and the suits.

The flight, which aims to conduct more than just a spacewalk but also test the Starlink satellite communications system and conduct scientific experiments, will send the crew to an orbit 870 miles above Earth, more than three times the altitude of the International Space Station and the highest altitude reached by a human spacecraft since NASA's Apollo moon missions decades ago.

In addition to the Polaris Dawn mission, Isaacman will provide financial support for two future SpaceX missions. The founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments flew with SpaceX on a three-day Inspiration 4 low-Earth orbit flight in 2021. Isaacman would not discuss financial details related to those missions.

Some ventures into the still-nascent market for private astronaut flights have suffered setbacks: This summer, a Japanese billionaire canceled plans for a future private crew flight aboard Starship, a spacecraft still under development by SpaceX, citing uncertainty about when the vehicle would be ready.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, has previously flown seven crewed suborbital flights, but those missions have been on hold for more than a year to deal with problems during an unmanned flight in 2022.

Virgin Galactic is not currently flying those missions as the company works to develop new vehicles. Founded by Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic aims to take travelers to the edge of space with a unique aircraft and spacecraft.

In addition to its work with Isaacman, SpaceX has flown non-government astronauts to the International Space Station in 2022 and 2023. Those flights were arranged by Houston-based Axiom Space. SpaceX said in August that it would fly another private crewed mission over Earth’s polar regions.

Source: Chinese version of The Wall Street Journal