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After being postponed from Monday (26) to Tuesday (27), SpaceX has once again postponed the Polaris Dawn mission, which will be launched on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.
If all goes well, the mission will be the first to offer a private spacewalk, as well as the farthest human flight since the Apollo era.
SpaceX Delays Polaris Dawn (Again)
- Initially, the mission was scheduled to take place at 4:38 a.m. (Brasilia time) on Monday (26), but was postponed for 24 hours as a measure to ensure additional time to complete pre-flight checks;
- The justification for the new delay is that SpaceX will “take a closer look at a helium leak on the ground” in a piece of equipment designed to separate from the rocket after liftoff;
- Now, take-off will take place on Wednesday (28) between 4:38 am and 7:09 am (Brasilia time), according to the British newspaper, Daily Mail. CNNBut of course if everything is ok;
- Liftoff is still scheduled to take place at Launch Complex-39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida;
- The information is posted on the company’s profile on X (see below).
Learn more about the Polaris Dawn mission.
The mission is expected to last five days. The initiative is part of a private spaceflight program funded by billionaire Jared Isaacson, who will lead the mission.
This will be Isaacman’s second trip to space, after the Inspiration4 mission, in 2021, the first entirely civilian mission outside our planet. At that time, US$250 million (R$1.37 billion, direct transfer) was raised for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a foundation that treats children with cancer in the United States.
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SpaceX engineers will be the first women to reach this point.
The Polaris Dawn mission is the first of three planned launches for the Polaris program. The project aims to advance private space exploration, expand scientific research in microgravity, and continue to raise funds for the same hospital.
In addition to Isaacman, the crew includes Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who will be the company’s first employees to travel to space.
The crew will launch into a highly elliptical orbit, reaching an altitude of about 1,400 kilometers, where it will be farther from Earth than any spacecraft since the Apollo missions, which ended in 1972.
That’s more than three times the latitude of the International Space Station (ISS). Menon and Gillis will become the first women to fly so far from our planet.
Another historic milestone for the mission will be the first all-civilian spacewalk, which should happen midway through, according to Space.com. statement On the official Polaris Dawn website.
The mission was initially planned for 2022, but has been delayed several times to allow for development and testing of SpaceX’s new spacewalk suit and necessary modifications to the Dragon capsule to withstand exposure to the vacuum of space.
The spacewalk, which is the most important experience of the mission, will take place on the third day and should last about two hours, starting from depressurization of the cabin to repressurization. During the activity, two crew members will fully exit the spacecraft.
The mission will end after two days of spacewalks, with a parachute landing on the Florida coast.
The program’s next launches don’t have specific targets yet, but Isaacman has expressed interest in collaborating with NASA’s orbiting missions, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and has suggested that the program’s third mission could be the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.
How to view the mission
You can watch the launch live online. SpaceX will stream the mission live on Space Company ProfileIt was announced that it will start at 0 AM (Brasilia time).
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