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This Tuesday may be a historic day for Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, which plans to launch a manned spacecraft to carry out the first commercial spacewalk in human history.

According to the schedule published on SpaceX's official website, the company plans to launch the Falcon 9 rocket into low Earth orbit at 3:38 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, August 27, at the 39A Launch Pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, to send the crew codenamed Polaris Dawn into space to perform the mission. Within four hours, the company will have two more launch opportunities, at 5:23 a.m. and 7:09 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday. If the mission is delayed, the company will have three backup launch opportunities on Wednesday, August 28, at the same time as Tuesday.

SpaceX The above image shows the Falcon 9 rocket carrying SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission standing on the launch pad in the twilight.

Some media reported earlier that SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission lasts for five days, and the core is a spacewalk. Although spacewalk is a regular task for NASA astronauts, this will be the first time that a private company has attempted such a spacewalk. This mission will also set a record, allowing astronauts to reach a high orbit of 1,400 kilometers above the earth, because the elliptical orbit of the mission flight is 190 kilometers from the earth at the closest point and 1,400 kilometers at the farthest point, which is the farthest flight distance from the earth by humans since the end of the US Apollo moon landing program in 1972.

Musk called the mission an "epic feat" and "early pioneer of the interstellar age" on the 19th of this month. If the project goes smoothly, the relevant technology will be used to send hundreds of people to Earth orbit, the moon, and even Mars in the future.

SpaceX introduced that the Dragon spacecraft and the astronauts on board will strive to reach the highest orbit around the earth since the Apollo program, and the commercial astronauts participating in the flight will perform extravehicular activities (EVA) for the first time wearing extravehicular spacesuits developed by SpaceX. They will also carry out 36 research experiments involving 31 partner institutions, aimed at promoting human health on Earth and in long-term space flight, and test Starlink laser communications in space.

Public data shows that SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew consists of four people. Among them, the mission commander Jared Isaacman is the founder and CEO of the electronic payment company Shift4, and also the funder of the mission. He has flown high-performance aircraft for more than 6,000 hours in total, and participated in SpaceX's Inspiration4 space mission in 2021, also serving as commander. After the Inspiration4 mission, he purchased three space travel flights under the SpaceX Polaris plan, and Polaris Dawn was the first of them. Isaacman refused to disclose how much he spent on this flight, but outside estimates are more than $100 million.

The other three members of the crew - mission pilot Kidd Poteet, mission specialist Sarah Gillis and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon - are all participating in a manned space flight mission for the first time.

Gillis and Menon are engineers at SpaceX, and this is the first time that SpaceX employees have become manned space crew members. Gillis is SpaceX's chief space operations engineer responsible for astronaut training and has served as a trainer for the Inspiration 4 mission. Menon is SpaceX's chief operations engineer responsible for crew operations development and has served as a flight controller for the company's Demo-2 and Crew-1 missions.

Poteet is a friend of Isaacman and a retired lieutenant colonel who served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. He served in the Air Force for 20 years and has more than 3,200 hours of jet flying experience.

According to the plan, on the third day of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft's flight in space, Isaacman and Gillis will walk out of the hatch and each conduct a spacewalk, each lasting about 15 to 20 minutes. Although only the two of them will walk out of the cabin, all crew members will wear extravehicular spacesuits developed by SpaceX because the entire interior of the Dragon spacecraft will be exposed to the vacuum of space to perform operations. The entire process, from exhausting the air in the spacecraft to resealing the spacecraft, takes about two hours.

If the first stage of the spacecraft's flight reaches an altitude of 1,400 kilometers from the earth as scheduled, it will not only create the farthest distance astronauts have flown into space since the Apollo moon landing program, but also make Gillis and Menon the women who have flown the farthest from the earth.