SpaceX's First Spacewalk Mission

A historic spaceflight is underway this week as SpaceX launched the Polaris Dawn mission into Earth orbit. This is a private mission on behalf of Shift 4 CEO Jared Isaacman, who paid for this flight, as well as at least two more Polaris missions in the future. Isaacman previously flew on the Inspiration4 mission, which he also paid for. And for Polaris Dawn, Isaacman is joined by Air Force pilot Scott Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis. Interestingly, this specific Dragon capsule is named Resilience and it's the same capsule that was used for the Inspiration4 mission, but refurbished with new gear. Resilience was also used for the Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station in May of 2021. After a few delays for various reasons over recent months, their very complicated launch window opened on September 10th. The crew loaded into the Dragon capsule and about 40 minutes before launch, weather caused a delay of two and a half hours, but at least they had tablets to stay entertained while they waited for better weather. Not only did they need good weather for the launch itself, but they also needed good weather for the booster landing and good weather five days later for the crew return splashdown. Thankfully, the stars aligned and the mission launched at 9.23 UTC on September 10th. The launch itself, the first stage landing and the second stage performed normally as planned. This was the fourth flight of this particular booster, serial number B1083, which previously flew the Crew-8 Dragon mission to the International Space Station in March of 2024 and two different batches of Starlink satellites also earlier this year. To minimize the risk of micrometeorite impact, SpaceX was able to choose a launch window with the lowest chance of debris impacts. The Dragon capsule was initially placed into an elliptical orbit with a high point or apogee of 1216 kilometers and a low point or perigee of 190 kilometers. This enabled them to pass through the South Atlantic Anomaly, a radioactive zone that exposed the crew to the equivalent of three months worth of radiation that astronauts experience on the International Space Station, in just a few orbits. Even though this is a short five-day mission, it's going to provide valuable data about radiation exposure, including several passes through the Van Allen radiation belts. Within 24 hours, Polaris Dawn reached its highest planned altitude of 140 kilometers using the Dragon capsule's Draco thrusters to raise its orbit, achieving the highest crewed Earth orbit since Gemini 11. They stayed at that orbit for 10 hours before lowering to their cruising altitude of 737 kilometers. On Thursday, Polaris Dawn will attempt a spacewalk with a new piece of hardware SpaceX is calling SkyWalker. This will also test their new and improved EVA spacesuits. Since there is no airlock, the capsule will be depressurized and all four crew members will be exposed to space. Although only two crew members, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, will have the longer umbilical cords to actually go outside. SpaceX intends to live stream the spacewalk on Thursday in a historic first for a private company. We here at Tomorrow will be following the mission closely and will be discussing it in detail on our live show this Sunday at 1700 UTC. We would love to see you there and hear your thoughts about this awesome mission. In the meantime, keep moving onwards and upwards and don't forget, add Astra to the stars.