The launch of the Polaris Dawn mission, an ambitious five-day journey to the upper reaches of Earth’s orbit, was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but a discovered helium leak forced a 24-hour delay.
Launch of Polaris Dawn mission delayed
The Polaris Dawn will take place on Tuesday at the earliest, with a delay of 24 hours.
- The Polaris Dawn crew will attempt to reach greater altitudes than humans have ever reached since NASA’s Apollo program in the 1970s and will also conduct the first commercial spacewalk.
- The Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon on board is now scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday between 3:38 a.m. and 7:09 a.m. ET.
- “Falcon and Dragon remain healthy and the crew remains ready for their multi-day mission to low Earth orbit,” SpacX said on social media.
A SpaceX capsule carrying four commercial astronauts seeking to conduct a groundbreaking spacewalk will launch no earlier than Wednesday morning.
The Polaris Dawn mission, an ambitious five-day journey to the upper reaches of Earth’s orbit, was scheduled for a launch on Tuesday before a discovered helium leak forced a delay, SpaceX announced on social media site X on Monday evening.
When the crew launches aboard a SpaceX Dragon, it will be the second trip into space for billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who funded the mission along with Elon Musk’s company. Isaacman previously traveled into orbit in 2021 on Inspiration4, the mission that became the first-ever private orbital spaceflight.
Isaacman will command a crew that includes pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both mission specialists. During the mission, the Polaris Dawn crew will attempt to reach altitudes higher than those reached by humans since NASA’s Apollo program in the 1970s and will also conduct the first commercial spacewalk.
Boeing Starliner: Astronauts will not return until 2025; this is how it came about
How high? Record orbit and spacewalk are among the goals of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission
When will Polaris Dawn launch?
The Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon is scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday between 3:38 a.m. and 7:09 a.m. ET.
The launch delay – the second since the Polaris Dawn crew arrived in Florida last week – was necessary to give ground crew time to “take a closer look at a helium leak on the ground” – a piece of equipment designed to detach from the rocket during launch, SpaceX explained on X.
The Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which is competing with the SpaceX Dragon for NASA certification for routine orbital flights, also suffered a helium leak on its way to the International Space Station. The leak, along with engine problems, led NASA to have to thwart the crew’s return trip to Earth aboard the Starliner.
However, SpaceX seems more optimistic that the helium leak would not jeopardize the upcoming launch of its proven spacecraft, which has been reliably transporting astronauts into orbit since 2020.
“Falcon and Dragon remain intact and the crew remains ready for their multi-day mission to low Earth orbit,” the company said.
If another mission abort becomes necessary, SpaceX says the launch could still take place on Thursday morning.
What is the Polaris Dawn mission?
The crew plans to ultimately spend five days in orbit, working on behalf of SpaceX to test technologies that could prove crucial as NASA and other space agencies set their sights on exploring the depths of space, including destinations such as Mars.
On its first day in orbit, the crew will reach an altitude of 1,400 kilometers – higher than any human has reached since the end of NASA’s Apollo moon program in the 1970s. The trajectory will take the capsule through the dangerous inner regions of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belt before descending into a new orbit about 700 kilometers above Earth.
The Van Allen Belts pose one of the greatest dangers for future astronauts venturing deep into the cosmos. But for future expeditions to the Moon and Mars to be possible, astronauts must be able to fly through them safely.
During their stay in orbit, the crew will conduct about 40 scientific experiments – many of them aimed at understanding the human body’s response to long space flights – and test a new laser-based satellite communications system using Starlink.
Menon, of Houston, also plans to read to her two young children in orbit the children’s book “Kisses from Space,” which she co-authored and which was inspired by her experiences preparing for the Polaris Dawn mission.
On the sixth day of the mission, the SpaceX vehicle will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and splash down at one of seven locations off the coast of Florida.
Conducting a risky spacewalk
The climax of the Polaris Dawn mission will undoubtedly come on day three, when the crew hopes to become the first non-governmental astronauts ever to complete a spacewalk.
The complex orbital maneuvers usually take place in spacecraft with airlocks, which eliminates the need to depressurize the entire capsule.
However, since Dragon does not have an airlock, the entire spacecraft must be depressurized when the hatch is opened. Even if only Isaacman and Gillis want to leave the ship, the entire crew will still be exposed to the vacuum of space.
For this reason, all four astronauts will wear EVA suits developed by SpaceX that receive oxygen via tethers. The aim of the operation, which is expected to last about two hours, is to test the suit’s performance for SpaceX.
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]
