The four-person Polaris Dawn mission launched early this morning (September 10) with the goal of making space history.
Polaris Dawn, which will conduct the first private spacewalk, launched today at 5:23 a.m. EDT (09:23 GMT) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Launch Complex 39A also hosted most of NASA’s Apollo lunar launches, the last manned missions to fly as far as the Polaris Dawn astronauts will fly.
With a loud roar from the launch pad, the rocket’s nine Merlin engines cast a dazzling light over the still waters surrounding KSC and rose into the sky until the engines’ glow disappeared into the sky as another shimmering dot among the stars.
The launch was originally scheduled to take place on August 26, but SpaceX pushed back on that attempt to conduct more pre-flight checks. An attempt the next day was canceled after the mission team discovered a helium leak in equipment supporting the Falcon 9. The launch was then postponed several times due to bad weather before Mother Nature finally gave in today.
About two minutes and 40 seconds after launch, the Falcon 9’s main engines shut down and the booster separated from the second stage as planned. The booster then performed a series of burns to align its return trajectory with the autonomous SpaceX drone ship Just Read the Instructions, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. About 9.5 minutes after launch, the rocket landed on the barge off the east coast of Florida.
Related: Polaris Dawn: Everything you need to know about the 1st mission of the Polaris program
Polaris Dawn’s Crew Dragon spacecraft separated from the Falcon 9 upper stage just over 12 minutes after launch.
“We wouldn’t be on this journey without all 14,000 of you at home and everyone else cheering us on,” billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who is commanding and funding Polaris Dawn, told SpaceX mission control shortly after Crew Dragon was launched into orbit. “We appreciate it. Now we get to work.”
The capsule initially entered an elliptical orbit with a maximum altitude (apogee) of about 1,200 kilometers, while the minimum altitude (perigee) was about 190 kilometers. After a few orbits, Crew Dragon will raise its apogee to about 1,400 kilometers – higher than any human has flown since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
Isaacman has been to space once before, and he also funded and led SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, which raised $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Isaacman hopes this mission can build on that momentum.
He will be joined on Polaris Dawn by the first two SpaceX employees to be launched into orbit: mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, and retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who will serve as mission pilot. The quartet will spend the next five days in space, conducting several dozen experiments in the novel space environment the mission is exploring.
After Polaris Dawn’s second day in space, Dragon will lower its apogee point to about 700 km, where it will remain until the deorbit burn and return to Earth. At this altitude, the Polaris Dawn crew will conduct the most critical part of their mission: the first commercial spacewalk in history.
The extravehicular activity (EVA) will take place on the third day of the mission. A primary goal of the operation is to test SpaceX’s new EVA spacesuit, which is visually similar to the company’s familiar black-and-white intravehicular activity (IVA) suit worn only inside the spacecraft.
Crew Dragon does not have an airlock, so the entire interior of the capsule is exposed to the vacuum of space during the EVA. All four Polaris Dawn crew members will therefore wear their protective gear during the spacewalk, although only Isaacman and Gillis will exit the spacecraft.
The duo will take turns exiting Crew Dragon to test the functionality and maneuverability of their suits. In total, the Polaris Dawn EVA will take about two hours from the start of Crew Dragon’s depressurization to the hatch closing and repressurization of the cabin.
The fourth day of the mission will feature a Starlink demonstration; the Polaris Dawn crew has hinted at an exciting surprise message they plan to deliver to Earth via SpaceX’s mega-constellation of internet satellites.
Polaris Dawn’s fifth day will be spent preparing for the journey home, assuming all other mission objectives have been accomplished by then. (The crew will also conduct about 40 science experiments during the mission.)
Polaris Dawn’s Dragon is scheduled to land on the water six days after launch and perform a final series of deorbit braking on the way back to land. If all goes according to plan, the Polaris Dawn crew will parachute into the ocean at one of the few possible landing zones off the coast of Florida, where a recovery ship will pick up the spacecraft and crew.
