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Over the weekend, the crew of the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission shared a wealth of details about the intriguing private mission that will send humans farther than they’ve flown from Earth in half a century.

Commanded and funded by private astronaut Jared Isaacman, the mission seeks to test new technologies that will contribute to humanity’s expansion into space. Among the goals are improving the performance of the Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket, performing the first commercial spacewalk in a new spacesuit developed by SpaceX, and testing Starlink laser communications in space.

“Our first goal is to travel further from Earth, and the last time humans walked on the moon was with Apollo 17, more than 50 years ago,” Isaacman said during an online chat hosted by social networking site X. ” So we’re headed for an apogee of 1,400 kilometers that puts us right in the Van Allen radiation belt. It’s a great opportunity to get some data, but it’s really about pushing our comfort zone.

The Polaris Dawn mission does not have a launch date, but SpaceX officials have confirmed that it is now the next crewed mission the company will fly. There are probably a few scheduling issues, but it’s possible the mission could launch in the next six to eight weeks.

Fly high

After liftoff from Florida, Isaacman said Dragon will complete seven orbits with a maximum altitude of about 1,400 km, about twice as high as any crewed mission has flown since 1972. The vehicle will then descend to a more circular orbit of about 700 km and prepare for a spacewalk.

In addition to Isaacman, who flew into space for the first time in September 2021 as the commander of the all-civilian Inspiration 4, the crew for this mission includes a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and experienced pilot named Scott Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. This will be the first time any SpaceX employee has ever flown in space.

After establishing the lower orbit, the crew will prepare for a spacewalk. They will don spacesuits and the atmosphere inside the Dragon spacecraft will be ejected into space. Isaacman and Gillis would then exit the spacecraft, their suits connected to the Dragon’s air and other supplies by an umbilical.

Although government astronauts have performed hundreds of spacewalks over the past 60 years, no private citizen has ever undertaken one.

“This is important because one day we will get to the moon and Mars and we will have to get out of our vehicles and the safety of the habitat to explore and build and repair things,” Isaacman said. SpaceX has already said it is working on a second generation of the suit for operations on the Moon and Mars.

The company spent about two years designing the first generation of this spacesuit for extraplanar activity, an upgrade to its current flight suit. It has been extensively tested in vacuum chambers and other facilities at places like NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Isaacman shared more details about the costumes in a follow-up conversation with former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

SpaceX also modified the Dragon for the spacewalk. Stu Keach, Dragon vice president at SpaceX, said a structure called a “Skywalker” was attached to the spacecraft near the hatch as a navigation aid.

Is this guy legit?

It would be easy to dismiss Isaacman as a space fan living out his dreams of spaceflight after he struck it rich. (The founder of Shift4 Payments is worth $1.5 billion, according to Forbes.) Undeniably, he loves to fly. He owns and regularly flies a MiG-29, one of the few of these Soviet fighters operating in the United States. Space flight is the ultimate frontier for people who love to fly.

But Isaacman seems to be in it for more than excitement. On his first two space flights, Isaacman sought out crew members from diverse backgrounds and made charitable donations a core component of each mission. I’ve had a number of conversations with Isaacman over the past five years, and he’s consistently emphasized the goal of opening up spaceflight to more people. For example, if humans are ever to have a truly sustainable presence in space, spacewalks must be commonplace. Therefore, astronauts outside of NASA should start making them. His funding of Polaris Dawn helped SpaceX focus on developing suits for such a purpose.

During Saturday’s social media event, I asked Isaacman about the risks involved in this mission. By flying higher than conventional spaceflight, ventilating the cabin and performing a spacewalk, he and the crew take on a new set of risks.

“We really felt comfortable going from point A to point B to an extraordinary floating international laboratory, but I think humanity’s ambitions are beyond that,” Isaacman said of the International Space Station. “We’re going to face different things. The risk is different when you are ventilating the vehicle to evacuate and you are in a space suit. But I think these are all positive steps in the direction of good for, you know, humanity’s interest in exploring our solar system and beyond.”

Isaacman apparently embraced the idea of ​​space settlement. He personally takes risks to help achieve this vision, investing a significant amount of money and time in training. It’s a bold, brave and important thing to do.