SpaceX’s groundbreaking Polaris Dawn mission will soon begin its daring journey into Earth’s orbit – and with it its plunge through the radiation belt that surrounds our planet.
The four-person civilian crew, led by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, is operated by NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Tuesday (September 10) after a series of launch delays due to technical problems and bad weatherSoon the crew will reach a maximum altitude of 1,400 kilometers – three times the altitude of the International Space Station (ISS) and further than any human has flown since Apollo Era over 50 years ago.
During the five-day flight at this record altitude, the SpaceX Dragon Resilience capsule with the crew members traverses the interior Van Allen radiation beltsone of two ring-shaped bands of high-energy solar particles magnetically trapped around the Earth. The belts, which protect our planet and its atmosphere from billions of such fast-moving particles, are strongest over the equator and virtually nonexistent over the poles.
Astronauts embarking on longer and more distant missions – for example to Mars – must safely traverse these belts to reach space. Therefore, the mission is “a unique opportunity to conduct research in an environment with increased radiation,” said Dr. Emmanuel Urquietavice chair of aerospace medicine at the University of Central Florida School of Medicine, said this in a recent interview with Space.com.
Isaacman and his crew members – former US Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon – will also try first private spacewalk at an altitude of 700 kilometers. During the historic spacewalk, the crew is in the safety of the inner radiation belt, which begins about 1,000 kilometers below the surface.
In contrast to previous space missions, which often differed in their research objectives, Polaris Dawn carries a radiation monitoring device similar to the one currently on board the ISS. The device, which is one of the 40 scientific experiments on boardwill allow scientists to catalogue radiation levels in a consistent and systematic way, Dr. Urquieta said. “They can then compare apples to apples in terms of radiation.”
The SpaceX crew capsule has undergone rigorous testing to ensure that its avionics are not destroyed by the intense radiation, otherwise the crew members would be deprived of their important navigation and communication capabilities. While the SpaceX team tested the limits of the avionics components by exposing them to radiation, until they brokeThe upcoming dives will test this capability in real time and provide data that will be useful for advancing technologies such as spacesuits and life support instruments that will be necessary for longer manned missions in the future.
The scientists also plan to look for biological effects of radiation by comparing the health of crew members before and after the flight. This will help in developing effective countermeasures and personalized medicine for astronauts on future missions, said Dr. Urquieta.
Compared to ground-based clinical trials, which typically monitor thousands of participants, only about 700 astronauts have flown into space since the 1960s, and the vast majority of them have been male.
The Polaris Dawn crew consists of two men and two women, providing a valuable opportunity to assess whether any effects of spaceflight, including radiation, can be attributed to the astronaut’s biological sex, Dr. Urquieta said.
“We still don’t have the diversity of people we want for human spaceflight,” he added. Private space missions like Polaris Dawn “give us information we wouldn’t otherwise have.”
