All is set for the launch of Polaris Dawn, the first privately funded space mission in history.

Static tests of Falcon 9, which will launch the mission – SpaceX

After a 24-hour delay caused by a helium leak in one of the service tower umbilicals, Odo is ready to launch the mission from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A. Polar Dawnwhich will include the first private spacewalk in history.

It’s planned for 9:38 Spanish Peninsular Time (UTC +2) tomorrow, Wednesday, August 28, 2024. It will be available to watch live on the Internet for three and a half hours before takeoff.

The launch window lasts four hours. If you are unable to launch it at first, there are two other options. at 23:23 and at 13:09.If not, there will be three more launch opportunities on Thursday, the 29th, at the same time.

The Falcon 9 first stage that will launch the mission is B1083, which will be flying for the fourth time. The idea is to recover it after launch so it can continue to be used.

This is a mission funded by a billionaire Jared “Rook” Isaacman, the same one who funded the Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, the first private space mission in history. He is accompanied by Kidd Poteet as pilot and Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon as mission specialists. Menon is also a doctor. This is Isaacman’s second mission and the first for the rest of the team. This is the first time Someone from SpaceX is going to space Well, Gillis and Menon are employees of the company.

Gillis is responsible for SpaceX’s astronaut training program and is training the Inspiration4 crew. Menon, meanwhile, has been the director of several of the company’s missions and managed SpaceX’s mission control communications with the crews of several missions, including Inspiration4.

They will fly on Crew Dragon Resilience, the same one that carried out the first regular mission of these capsules, delivering the Crew-1 crew to the International Space Station, as well as on the aforementioned Inspiration4. For this mission, a hatch is being installed on top, which in turn replaces the transparent dome installed for Inspiration4, which in turn replaced the docking mechanism with the International Space Station (ISS) used on its first mission.

Polaris Dawn will last for five days. It will be placed in initial orbit 190×1200 kilometers which will be increased to 1400 using the Resilience mechanisms once everything on board is verified to be in order. This will be higher orbit any manned mission in orbit around Earth, breaking the record set by Gemini 11. It will also be the farthest it has ever been from Earth. since the end of the Apollo program.

They will remain in this orbit for about 10 hours and then they will drop to 190×700It is in this lower orbit that Isaacman and Gillis will take turns leaving the ship for about 15 or 20 minutes to test out a new spacesuit developed by SpaceX. During the spacewalk, the capsule will be depressurized, so Poteet and Menon will also have to don spacesuits.

Artist’s impression of stability during the Polaris Dawn mission spacewalk – SpaceX

Since Isaacman and Gillis won’t be carrying the body out of the ship entirely, but will remain tethered to some handholds while they look out, there’s some disagreement about whether this qualifies as a spacewalk or not. But semantics aside, what seems to me to be a fruitless debate, what’s impressive to me is that we’re talking about a mission paid for by any citizen. Well, a citizen with many millions in his checking account, but ultimately a citizen who has purchased a spacewalk. Even though it’s something very few people have access to, it’s an achievement that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, and it gives a sense of How has the issue of access to space changed?.

During their stay in orbit, in addition to spacewalks, the Polaris Dawn crew will conduct about 40 experiments of twenty institutions dedicated to both researching aspects of human health on Earth and our understanding of human health in space. Your capsule will also be the first to try use the Starlink satellite constellation maintain communication with mission control and send and receive data throughout the flight.

The Polaris program consists of three missions: Polaris Dawn, the second Polaris mission, not yet dated, which will use what was learned in the first to go a little further, and a third, which, if nothing changes, will be first manned mission of a starship. Although, for that to happen, you’d still have to fly one or another starship and return to earth in one piece. Plus, they’d have to add and test a life support system later.

The program is on Twitter under the name @PolarisProgram. But my list of space-related Twitter accounts will also be full of talk about the mission these days.