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SpaceX plans to launch Four people The daring mission will enter Earth orbit as early as Wednesday, testing new technology, exposing astronauts to high levels of radiation and potentially changing the way future spacewalks are conducted.
The privately funded mission, called Polaris Dawn, will be led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who helped fund the mission. First private citizen space mission in 2021Polaris Dawn will also include SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, and former Air Force pilot Scott Poteet. The mission was originally scheduled to launch on Tuesday, but the flight Delayed due to helium leakThe team will spend five days aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and will conduct The most distant manned mission since the Apollo 17 space flight in 1972 To the moon.
This distance would place the spacecraft more than 200 miles into the Van Allen radiation belts— The region of space surrounding the Earth And it is highly radioactive. Discovered during America’s first space missionIn 1958, its high-energy particles could damage spacecraft instruments.
The technicians inside the capsule will have to withstand the radiation, as will the astronauts. The two crew members, Isaacman and Gillis, will leave the spacecraft through a hatch that exposes the entire capsule to the outside, rather than through an airlock as astronauts normally do.
Passengers will acclimate to decompression conditions over about 45 hours to avoid nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood – which could be fatal.
All crew members and all systems on board need to be able to withstand the radiation; before Isaacman and Gillis start walking, each passenger needs to be suited up in SpaceX’s new spacesuits. The capsule has been rigorously tested on Earth to make sure the radiation won’t fry its circuits and put the astronauts in trouble. But testing equipment on the ground is not the same as putting it in space, and SpaceX hopes the mission will provide valuable information on how to build instruments and spacecraft for future missions.
This is especially important for future missions to the Moon and beyond—computers have come a long way since the 1970s, the last time humans had to deal with the levels of Van Allen radiation that the Polaris Dawn crew was likely to face.
“Our current technology is much more vulnerable to these accelerated particles because even a single particle impact can damage our increasingly smaller instruments and electronics,” said David Sibeck, Van Allen Probes mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In an interview with Space Center Houston in 2020“As technology advances, understanding and predicting our space environment actually becomes more urgent.”
Crucially, Isaacman and Gillis will also test the protective capabilities of their spacesuits when they exit the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The design of these sets Only two and a half years The suits — a surprisingly quick turnaround by space exploration standards — are designed to upgrade NASA’s famously bulky spacesuits. Rather than having life support systems integrated into the suit like NASA’s suits, SpaceX’s new suits connect to the spacecraft via a tube — which is how Isaacman and Gillis are able to breathe and move during their spacewalks.
In addition to radiation, space suits may also require Withstands micro shocksThere are all sorts of small objects hurtling around in Earth’s orbit at 17,000 miles per hour; a puncture could have devastating consequences. Space suits are tested against debris on Earth, but like the instruments, controlled testing is not the same as real-life testing.
SpaceX argues that despite the risks, the mission should go ahead because of the wealth of knowledge that could be gained. If the flight is successful, humans will gain a ton of new data on how Van Allen radiation affects our latest technology and bodies; astronauts might get another way to walk in space; and scientists will get a lot of analysis of spacesuit design.
Not to mention the impact the mission could have on the long-term goal of returning humans to Mars. moon and Mars.
SpaceX specifically highlighted the importance of its new spacesuits to achieving this goal, writing on its website: website, “As life becomes multi-planetary, the development of this suit and the execution of this spacewalk will be an important step in the scalable design of space suits for future long-duration missions.”
SpaceX says it doesn’t plan to stop there: Polaris Dawn is part of the Polaris program, which will include two follow-on missions—all of which Isaacman is co-funding with the company.
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