SpaceX Postpones Polaris Mission Due to Helium Leak

Miami (EFE).- SpaceX announced Monday that due to a helium leak it has postponed until Wednesday the launch of the historic Polaris Dawn manned mission, which will attempt the first commercial spacewalk and will also be placed at an altitude reached in more than 50 years.

Liftoff had been scheduled for early Tuesday morning at 3:38am (07:38 GMT) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US, and now one option is for the same time on Wednesday.

SpaceX also announced that there are two additional launch opportunities in a four-hour window that day: at 5:23 a.m. EST (9:23 a.m. GMT) and 7:09 a.m. EST (11:09 a.m. GMT).

“Backup capabilities will be available at this time on Thursday, August 29, if needed,” Elon Musk’s company said.

“Teams are closely investigating the helium leak,” SpaceX said on social media.

“Falcon and Dragon remain in good condition and the crew remains ready for a multi-day mission in low Earth orbit,” he added.

SpaceX Ready to Launch Polaris Mission, Plans First Private Spacewalk

SpaceX has completed the final tests before the launch of the historic Polaris Dawn crewed mission, which will attempt the first commercial spacewalk and also take the spacecraft to an altitude not reached in more than 50 years.

As SpaceX founder and president Elon Musk confirmed on Monday, the company has received the green light to launch the mission after tests carried out on Sunday, including a crew.

“Crew safety is paramount, and this mission carries more risk than usual as it will be the farthest humans have traveled from Earth since NASA’s Apollo program and the first commercial spacewalk,” Musk wrote on social media platform X.

Five days in space

It’s the first of three missions billionaire Jared Isaacman acquired from SpaceX in 2022 for his Polaris program for an undisclosed sum. Isaacman, the founder of online payments company Shift4, commanded the historic Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the first all-commercial mission to orbit the planet.

The Polaris Dawn crew, which is expected to spend five days in space, includes former U.S. Air Force pilot Scott Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who will serve as mission specialists and flight surgeon, respectively.

They will travel aboard a Dragon capsule that will be launched by a Falcon 9 rocket made by SpaceX.

move independently approximately 12 minutes after takeoff and will maintain an elliptical trajectory for five days of flight.

First day of the trip

On its first day of travel, Polaris Dawn will reach a maximum altitude above Earth of about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles), which is further than any astronaut has traveled since NASA’s Apollo program ended in 1972, and is about 960 kilometers (600 miles) above the International Space Station (ISS) flight path.

This will place the Dragon and its crew in the early stages of the Van Allen belts, a region of energetic particles around the Earth that begins at an altitude of 640 kilometers (400 miles) and extends to about 58,000 kilometers (36,000 miles).

The crew will remain in this orbit for about ten hours, during which time they will conduct a series of scientific tests to study the effects of a high-radiation environment on the human body.

Menon and Gillis would also become the women who have traveled the farthest from Earth in history, far more than her predecessor, NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, who traveled 620 kilometers (386 miles) aboard a spacecraft.

Walk

On the third day of the Polaris journey, Dawn plans to conduct its first private spacewalk, which will initially last about two hours and be performed in turns by Isaacman and Gillis using 3.5-meter (12-foot) long cables.

The operation will be broadcast live by multiple cameras located inside and outside the capsule, through which Isaacman will appear first, followed by Gillis.

For the historic trek, which will take place about 700 kilometers (435 miles) above the planet, the crew will have new extravehicular activity (EVA) suits developed by SpaceX to provide greater flexibility and range of motion.

The suits, which will be pressurized and have chambers, will be used by four crew members, as the Dragon has no airlocks and therefore the entire capsule must be depressurized before the hatch can be opened for exit.

According to the Polaris program, during the mission, crew members will conduct about 40 experiments for “critical scientific research” related to human health, “both on Earth and during future long-duration spaceflight.”

Like the Inspiration4 project, which raised over $250 million in donations for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Polaris Dawn will also raise funds for the same children’s hospital.

The mission is scheduled to land off the coast of Florida on its sixth day of operation.