A helium leak has forced SpaceX to postpone the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, which was supposed to send four astronauts into orbit around the Earth, until today. The world is distracted by wars, the US election and a thousand other problems, but if it weren’t for that, it should be paying a lot of attention to the mission. Polaris Dawn, Which will last for five days and will be more exciting than others.
First of all, it is a completely privately run company. SpaceX is owned by Elon Musk and his rocket and Dragon capsule have been leased for, we don’t know how many millions of dollars, for three missions to American billionaire Jared Isaacman, who already has 7,000 hours of flight time as a pilot and astronaut. It also has the largest private air force in the world, training Air Force pilots. Flying with him will be Scott Poteet, a friend who has spent 20 years observing fighter jets, and two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.
Walking
This crew will go down in history as the first to reach an altitude of 1,400 kilometers at the apogee of an elliptical orbit. Since the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, no human has been this far from Earth, beyond the magnetic field that protects the planet and its life forms from solar radiation. The space station passengers travel 960 kilometers less and are more protected.
Two Polaris Dawn astronauts, Isaacman and Gillis, will later write their names in space exploration history by stepping out of the Dragon capsule for a commercial spacewalk. It will take place 700 kilometers from Earth and will be the first extravehicular activity (EVA) to be performed in space by humans. It will also be the first film to be shot by a myriad of cameras inside and outside the shuttle, and broadcast live to Earth, to test laser communications with Starlink, the satellite broadcasting network that Musk has put into orbit. The walk will last a few hours and will be a truly exceptional event, with footage equivalent to what we have only seen in movies so far. With the images, Isaacman wants to raise money, as he did in 2021 on his first private spacewalk, Inspiration4, for an American hospital that treats children with cancer, St. Jude in Memphis. Other funds will come from the 40 experiments requested by American institutions and universities: from venous gas embolisms to neuro-ocular syndrome associated with long-duration spaceflight, to the interactions of human biological systems with radiation. There’s also a lot of anticipation for testing new extravehicular activity suits, which offer greater mobility, helmet visor displays, advanced cameras, new fabrics to manage thermal issues, and a “scalable” design that can be adapted to different needs. “Building a base on the Moon and a city on Mars will require millions of spacesuits,” say Polaris Dawn’s forward-looking technicians. Developing and conducting spacewalks of this type will be important steps for future long-duration missions as life becomes multiplanetary. The protection offered by the new suits is crucial: The mission will pass over the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly, an area that is not well protected by the magnetic field because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis. The spacecraft will pass only 200 kilometers above sea level, but the astronauts will receive in a single pass the same amount of radiation that the space station receives in three months.
New Era
It will be the most ambitious and crazy flight in decades and will usher in a new era in space exploration. The few NASA scientists left in Houston look on with envy at what Musk and Isaacman are doing. It is the individuals who are now dreaming and preparing to reach first the Moon and then Mars, and they are doing so with meticulous planning that looks ahead, ready to exploit the enormous economic returns that could result from new colonization. In a few years, the Chinese flag or the flag bearing the logo of Elon Musk’s company will be planted on the Moon, and it is really hard to decide which event the rest of humanity would prefer.
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