Commander Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments who purchased the five-day orbital flight from SpaceX, and mission specialist Sarah Gillis, one of two SpaceX engineers who are the company’s first employees to fly to space, exited SpaceX’s Dragon capsule one at a time, each spending about 12 minutes outside. The astronauts were traveling at 17,500 mph at an altitude more than 450 miles above Earth, higher than the International Space Station.

But there’s a catch. Because Dragon does not have an airlock, all four crewmembers were exposed to the vacuum of space. The mission profile added risk compared to a typical spacewalk, where astronauts enter and exit through a vacuum-sealed chamber.

“Today’s EVA was the first time four humans were exposed to the vacuum of space while completing the first-ever commercial astronaut spacewalk from a commercially-produced spacecraft in commercially-produced extravehicular activity [EVA] suits,” said Stu Keech, vice president of Dragon engineering at SpaceX.

SpaceX provided live stream coverage of the full, approximately two-hour process, which can be rewatched here.

The Falcon 9 rocket carrying Dragon and the Polaris Dawn crew lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Tuesday morning. Almost immediately, the astronauts began preparing for the spacewalk.

The first step was a “prebreathe” to remove nitrogen bubbles that can form within body tissues, causing decompression sickness. During the approximately two-day process, the cabin’s pressure was lowered and oxygen levels were raised gradually to help the crew acclimate.

After that, the astronauts donned their EVA spacesuits, which are designed to be worn both inside and outside the spacecraft. Developed by SpaceX with help from Isaacman’s Polaris team, the suits have endured hundreds of hours of testing and feature greater mobility, durability, and even a high-tech heads-up display (HUD).

“Building a base on the moon and a city on Mars will require thousands of spacesuits,” SpaceX said in a post on X. “The development of this suit, and the EVA performed on this mission, will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions.”

After completing suit leak checks and venting Dragon down to vacuum, Isaacman opened the hatch and was first to egress. Remaining attached to the spacecraft, he used a specially designed structure called Skywalker to move around and perform tests on the suit’s thermal and mobility systems. Skywalker is equipped with several cameras that were used to capture the moment in real time.

“SpaceX, back at home we all have a lot of work to do,” Isaacman said as he looked down on the planet below, “but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.”

After Isaacman returned, it was Gillis’ turn. The SpaceX engineer stepped out and performed the same series of tests, while mission pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon monitored her support systems.

Finally, the hatch was closed, Dragon was repressurized, and the astronauts removed their suits.

“Dragon uses pure nitrogen during ‘repress,’ which mixes with the pure oxygen being released into the cabin via the open loop system that keeps the EVA suits pressurized,” SpaceX said. “This process is unique to Dragon which acts as its own airlock.”

From venting to repressurization, the entire process took about one hour and 45 minutes.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was quick to praise the crew for its historic achievement, as was NASA administrator Bill Nelson.

“Congratulations @PolarisProgram and @SpaceX on the first commercial spacewalk in history!” Nelson posted on X. “Today’s success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA’s long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy.”

Polaris Dawn, the first of three missions Isaacman purchased for SpaceX under the Polaris program, has so far lived up to its lofty expectations. In addition to the spacewalk, the astronauts on day two of the mission ascended to an orbital height not reached by humans since the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, passing through hazardous radiation belts. 

Menon also read a children’s book she authored, Kisses from Space, for her family and patients of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, live from orbit. While the Polaris missions are scientific—Polaris Dawn alone will conduct nearly 40 experiments—they are also billed as charitable endeavors to raise money for St. Jude.

Ultimately, the Polaris program may have a ripple effect on NASA’s efforts to return Americans to the moon via the Artemis program.

Polaris Mission III is expected to be the debut crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The space agency has asked the company to develop a lunar lander variant of Starship to land astronauts on the moon’s south pole, which will be used during Artemis III scheduled for September 2026.

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Polaris Dawn, a five-day orbital mission purchased from the company by Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments, is scheduled for lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than 3:38 a.m. EDT Tuesday morning. Backup launch opportunities are available at 5:23 a.m. EDT and 7:09 a.m. EDT, with the same approximately four-hour window open Wednesday morning.

Spaceflight enthusiasts can watch as SpaceX streams the launch and mission highlights—including the first attempt at a civilian spacewalk—live on its website, X account, and YouTube channel. Coverage will begin 3.5 hours before takeoff. The company and Isaacman’s Polaris Program will post mission updates on their websites and social media feeds.

What’s the Big Deal?

Polaris Dawn’s four-person crew comprises Isaacman and retired Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, as well as SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who will be the first company employees to actually reach space. They will hitch a ride on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and circle the Earth in a modified version of the firm’s Crew Dragon capsule.

The Dragon—which in 2021 carried the first all-civilian astronaut crew on the Inspiration4 mission, also purchased by Isaacman—required a few major tweaks to support the historic civilian spacewalk. Arguably the riskiest portion of the mission, viewers will be able to witness it in real time.

Only two astronauts will exit the capsule, using newly installed mobility aids to perform tests on SpaceX’s specially designed extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits. The spacewalk is scheduled to happen on day three of the flight, which would be Thursday if it launches as planned.

“It will look like we’re doing a little bit of a dance,” said Isaacman last month, “…[but] we’re going through a test matrix on the suit. And the idea is to learn as much as we possibly can about this suit and get it back to the engineers to inform future suit design evolutions.”

However, because Dragon lacks an airlock, all four crewmembers will be exposed to the vacuum of space. To prepare, NASA engineers “baked out” the capsule’s interior using what is essentially a giant oven. The objective was to burn off toxic chemicals that could be released when oxygen is vented from the cabin.

Plenty of work has gone into preparing the astronauts and their EVA suits too. In the two days leading up to the spacewalk, for example, crew members will perform what is known as a “prebreathe” to remove nitrogen bubbles that can form within body tissues, causing decompression sickness.

In addition, the astronauts have spent about 100 hours wearing their suits and thousands of hours preparing using simulators, vacuum chambers, and centrifuges. They’ve gone scuba diving and skydiving, flown fighter jets, and even summited Ecuador’s Cotopaxi, a nearly 20,000-foot peak.

Poteet, who flew Air Force fighters for nearly two decades and was a Thunderbird, said the regimen was “some of the most challenging training that I’ve ever experienced.”

Though it will not be live streamed, Polaris Dawn will also ascend to an orbital height not reached by humans since the Apollo 17 astronauts more than half a century ago. A few hours after launch on Tuesday, Dragon will fly to an apogee of 870 miles, passing through a portion of the treacherous Van Allen radiation belts.

The following day, live on orbit, Menon will read a children’s book she authored to her family and patients of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Polaris Dawn in addition to being a research mission is a charitable endeavor, aiming to raise millions for St. Jude like Inspiration4 before it.

On the fourth day of the mission, there will also be a live demonstration of a special communication system in Dragon’s trunk, which uses laser beams to interact with Starlink satellites as they zip through space. SpaceX last month said the stream will be worth tuning into but did not provide specifics.

If all goes according to plan, Isaacman, Poteet, Gillis, and Menon will splash down at one of seven locations off the coast of Florida on Sunday.

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The FAA on Wednesday announced it will require an investigation into Falcon 9’s launch of 21 Starlink satellites that morning, which concluded with the booster tipping over into the Atlantic Ocean. Depending on the length of the investigation, two crewed SpaceX missions that will rely on the rocket—one for NASA, the other for a billionaire entrepreneur—could face setbacks.

“We’re just focused on recovery weather at this point. I think that is still [the] gate to our launch.” Jared Isaacman, the purchaser and commander of the latter mission, said in a post on X, seeming to dismiss concerns of a lengthy inquiry.

Wednesday’s flight was the first of two planned back-to-back Starlink launches, the second of which was called off. After its second stage successfully deployed the satellites into orbit, Falcon 9’s first stage appeared to suffer a collapsed landing leg when it touched down on SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, stationed several miles off the Florida coast. As flames erupted around it, the booster gave way and tumbled into the water. Beyond the loss of the booster, no injuries or damage were reported.

Still, the incident was enough to bring an FAA investigation, seemingly ending a streak of more than 250 successful SpaceX booster recoveries dating back to 2021. The first stage that flew Wednesday, B1062, completed a record-setting 23rd launch and landing. It played a crucial role for SpaceX, serving as the booster for Inspiration4, which sent the first all-civilian crew to orbit, and Ax-1, the first crewed mission to the International Space Station flown entirely by commercial operators.

“Losing a booster is always sad,” said Jon Edwards, vice president of Falcon launch vehicles at SpaceX, in a post on X. “Each one of them has a unique history and character. Thankfully this doesn’t happen often, due to the robust design and vigilance of the team.

An investigation does not necessarily mean a prolonged grounding. SpaceX will need to submit a final report, including any actions it needs to take to prevent the issue from happening again, for FAA approval.

But if the mishap did not jeopardize public safety or Falcon 9’s safety-critical systems, SpaceX could request the FAA make a public safety determination. If approved, that would allow launches to continue during the investigation. When Falcon 9 was grounded in July, SpaceX used this method to return to flight in just two weeks.

“We are working as hard as we can to thoroughly understand root cause and get corrective actions in place ASAP,” Edwards said on X. “One thing we do know though is this was purely a recovery issue and posed no threat to primary mission or public safety.”

SpaceX is relying on Falcon 9 to launch Isaacman and three other crewmembers, including the first company employees to fly to space, on the historic Polaris Dawn mission. Originally scheduled for this week but delayed due to weather concerns and a small helium leak, the five-day mission will feature the first attempt at a civilian spacewalk. It also aims to orbit at a higher altitude than humans have reached since Apollo 17 more than half a century ago.

Complicating matters somewhat is that Launch Complex 39-A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which SpaceX will use for Polaris Dawn, is needed by NASA for the Europa Clipper mission scheduled for October 10. The company will also use Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to launch Crew-9 to the ISS, which itself could be delayed by the investigation.

Unlike other Commercial Crew rotation missions SpaceX has flown for NASA, Crew-9 will have two astronauts rather than four to accommodate Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been at the ISS since June on Boeing Starliner’s inaugural crew flight test (CFT). The space agency over the weekend opted to bring home the astronauts on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule rather than Starliner, making Falcon 9 an important piece of the operation.

Any delay to Crew-9 could further force NASA to come up with a new plan for Starliner. The capsule needs to depart the space station before Crew-9 launches in order to make way for Dragon.

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The Polaris Dawn mission will take four private citizens to a maximum altitude of 870 miles and see two of the crewmembers exit the Crew Dragon capsule while they’re more than 400 miles from Earth. The delay was caused by a leak in the umbilical that loads liquids aboard the rocket. The next launch opportunity is Wednesday at 3:38 a.m. EDT.

• READ MORE: Polaris Dawn Is SpaceX’s Most Experimental—and Risky—Human Spaceflight Yet

The mission is led by billionaire Jared Isaacman and includes former Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis. Since the capsule doesn’t have an air lock, all four astronauts will have to wear new specially designed spacesuits that will sustain them in the vacuum of space.

The Dragon has been extensively modified to accommodate the mission.

It’s Isaacman’s second trip to space. His 2021 flight raised $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

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The jets are owned by billionaire entrepreneur and Polaris Dawn commander Jared Isaacman, who purchased the five-day orbital mission and two other private astronaut flights from SpaceX in 2022. Among other feats, Polaris Dawn will ascend to orbital heights not reached since the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972 and feature the first attempt at a commercial spacewalk.

“The idea is to develop and test new technology and operations in furtherance of SpaceX’s bold vision to enable humankind to journey among the stars,” Isaacman said during a mission overview briefing on Monday.

But with those feats comes a degree of risk. At their apex, the astronauts will travel through a portion of the hazardous Van Allen radiation belts. And because the Dragon spacecraft that will carry the crew has no airlock, all four astronauts will be exposed to the vacuum of space during the historic spacewalk.

Polaris Dawn is scheduled to launch no earlier than 3:38 a.m. EDT on Monday within a four-hour window from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A. Earlier this week, the Dragon capsule was transported to the pad, where teams are mating it with a Falcon 9 booster that will make its fourth flight.

Joining Isaacman will be mission pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a longtime friend and coworker of the Shift4 Payments CEO. Poteet served as mission director for Inspiration4, a 2021 orbital mission—also purchased from SpaceX by Isaacman—that featured the first all-civilian crew.

Accompanying them will be the first SpaceX employees to actually fly to space—mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. Gillis, a SpaceX engineer and astronaut trainer, has prepared several NASA crews that have reached the final frontier and was Isaacman’s instructor for Inspiration4. Menon, the company’s lead space operations engineer, will also serve as Polaris Dawn’s medical officer.

This week, crewmembers will conduct a refresher on the mission’s nearly 40 planned experiments, dry dress rehearsal, and launch readiness review. They will spend a maximum of five days orbiting the Earth before splashing down at one of seven locations off the coast of Florida.

Great Heights

Polaris Dawn will waste no time achieving its objectives, beginning with a historic climb on day one.

Hitching a ride on Falcon 9, Dragon will reach space in about 10 minutes and within hours will begin to pass through the inner regions of the Van Allen Belts—a treacherous zone where the risk of damage from radiation is high.

“The Earth’s magnetosphere traps the high energy radiation particles and shields the Earth from the solar storms and the constantly streaming solar wind that can damage technology as well as people living on Earth,” according to NASA. “These trapped particles form two belts of radiation, known as the Van Allen Belts, that surround the Earth like enormous donuts.”

Dragon will ascend to an oval orbit with an apogee of 870 miles, more than three times higher than the International Space Station. It would be the highest orbital altitude reached by humans in half a century.

“Generally speaking, vehicles don’t like radiation, so that’s why we’re going to stay there for the shortest amount of time that’s necessary to gather the data we want,” said Isaacman.

In that time, however, the crew will perform plenty of experiments, leveraging the unique high-radiation environment to potentially learn from it. The Polaris program and SpaceX have partnered with more than 30 institutions around the world to perform the research, which will focus largely on human health.

“We are born into 1G,” said Menon. “When you go into 0G, whether it’s for five days or a nine-month trip to Mars, things change. You have bone density loss, you have vision changes, you have severe motion sickness, and we don’t have answers for all of that.”

To search for them, the astronauts will don special contact lenses that measure the pressure inside of their eyes and will test ways to reduce the disorientation experienced when returning to Earth, for example.

Research will continue throughout the mission. On the fourth day, the crew will test out a specially designed communication system in Dragon’s trunk, which will use laser beams to communicate with SpaceX Starlink satellites as they zip through space. According to Gillis, the demonstration will be livestreamed and worth tuning into, though she did not get into specifics.

Polaris Dawn is also a charitable endeavor, aiming to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Menon, for example, will debut a children’s book she wrote, the proceeds for which will go to cancer research, during day two of the flight. The SpaceX engineer said the company has installed Starlink terminals at hospitals nationwide to support remote medicine capabilities.

And in a fundraising partnership with Doritos, Polaris Dawn’s cargo will include a container of chips. According to its website, the initiative has raised $500,000. But there won’t be any sticky fingers—the classic Doritos “dust” has been replaced by a special oil-based coating designed to retain flavor.

Isaacman on Monday said Polaris Dawn has already raised “millions” for St. Jude and that he plans to continue the partnership for the Polaris II and Polaris III missions. Inspiration4 raised more than a quarter of a billion for the charity.

Suit Up

Reaching the Van Allen Belts would be a huge feat. But that’s arguably the second-most important—and risky—mission objective.

On the third day of the flight, two of the astronauts will don specially designed SpaceX extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits and exit Dragon. They will remain attached to the spacecraft—at one point by just their feet—using mobility aids to maneuver around. The vehicle will be oriented to shield the crew from direct sunlight.

The entire process, from venting to repressurization, will take about two hours and will be livestreamed. Each astronaut will spend 15 to 20 minutes outside the capsule.

“It will look like we’re doing a little bit of a dance,” said Isaacman, “…[but] we’re going through a test matrix on the suit. And the idea is to learn as much as we possibly can about this suit and get it back to the engineers to inform future suit design evolutions.”

But there’s a catch: Dragon does not have an airlock, which means all four crewmembers will be exposed to the vacuum of space.

To remedy this, they will perform a process known as “pre-breathing” beginning just one hour after reaching orbit. The procedure will acclimate the astronauts to a low-pressure environment by gradually reducing the pressure inside the capsule. According to Menon, the idea is to “slowly pull nitrogen out of our body and reduce our risk of decompression sickness.”

On the day of the spacewalk, their spacesuits will be pressurized with 100 percent oxygen for a final pre-breathe. The entire process will take about 45 hours.

Per Isaacman, the spacewalk portion of Polaris Dawn took up the bulk of mission planning, in part due to the development of SpaceX’s EVA suits.

The suits are an evolution of the company’s current apparel, which is designed to be worn only inside Dragon. The upgraded digs feature added mobility and materials pulled from Falcon 9’s trunk and interstage. A 3D-printed helmet includes a heads-up display, which shows spacesuit pressure, temperature, and humidity, as well as a clock to track the astronauts’ time in the void. The suit’s temperature can even be controlled using a dial.

“You might think that we would be extremely cold out in the vacuum of space, and actually we’re more concerned about being too warm,” said Menon.

The suits have undergone an “incredibly expensive testing campaign” with the crew, which has spent about 100 hours wearing them. Because the hardware is “constantly evolving,” per Menon, it could not be tested in a pool. Instead, the astronauts used special harnesses to simulate weightlessness and wore heavy down suits—the kind you’d need at the top of Mount Everest—over their EVA suits.

“We’re really trying to create an environment that doesn’t have convection, looking at thermals, looking at what we’ll actually experience in these suits,” said Menon. “We’ve covered everything from lifecycle testing, pressure testing, [micrometeoroid and orbital debris] testing, extreme hot and cold testing, [and] an entire campaign on [electrostatic discharge] and flammability testing.”

That level of rigor extended to the Dragon capsule, which itself required a few key modifications for the mission. SpaceX added a nitrogen repressurization system, for example, and made upgrades to the spacecraft’s environmental sensors and life support system.

“This includes adding a lot more oxygen to the spacecraft so we can feed oxygen to four suits through umbilicals for the full duration of the spacewalk,” said Menon.

Outside Dragon’s hatch, engineers installed what SpaceX calls the Skywalker, a structure that will help the astronauts find their footing in zero gravity. Atop the Skywalker is a new camera that will capture footage of the spacewalk. Handholds and footholds were added to the capsule’s interior.

In addition, all of that hardware has been “baked out” in a thermal vacuum chamber, Menon said, to burn off chemicals that could produce toxic gas when the capsule is vented.

Thousands of Hours

The astronauts have already prepared extensively for the spacewalk. They recently walked through the entire prebreathe process and venting and repressurization sequence, for example, inside the vacuum chamber at Johnson Space Center.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg.

“I can tell you without a doubt this has been some of the most challenging training that I’ve ever experienced, and I could not imagine a more qualified crew than these three individuals,” said Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and member of the Thunderbirds.

The astronauts performed zero-gravity flights in the vacuum chamber, trained in a centrifuge to experience g-forces, and spent time in an altitude chamber to get familiar with symptoms of hypoxia—a condition caused by low oxygen levels in the body. The crew also used a pressure chamber to practice many of the experiments they will conduct in space back on Earth. Gillis and Menon underwent medical training at partner hospitals to be qualified to care for the team.

Each crewmember also spent about 2,000 hours in a simulator, poring over spacecraft and system manuals, communication methods, crew resource management, and contingency scenarios.

“To put this into perspective, I flew fighters for 20 years—I accomplished about 1,500 hours in the simulator training for combat,” said Poteet.

Another key component of training was, as Poteet put it, “getting comfortable in uncomfortable scenarios.” Over the past few years, the crew has gone scuba diving and skydiving, flown fighter jets, and even summited Cotopaxi in Ecuador, a nearly 20,000-foot peak.

“When it’s a multiday journey to get to the summit, you’re dehydrated, you’re hungry, you’re grouchy…it sucks,” said Poteet. “And you learn a lot about yourself under this stressful environment, and you learn a lot about each other.”

‘The 737 for Human Spaceflight’

Though it was purchased by an outside stakeholder, Polaris Dawn has some major implications for SpaceX.

For one, it will be the company’s first mission with crew since Falcon 9 was grounded by the FAA in July. The rocket was quickly cleared for a return to action and has since completed several Starlink launches.

But the mission’s success—or lack thereof—could also inform the timeline of SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions purchased by Isaacman. Little is known about the second, Polaris II, which will also use Dragon and Falcon 9. But Polaris III is intended to be the debut human spaceflight mission for Starship, which so far has completed four orbital test flights.

“It could very well be the [Boeing] 737 for human spaceflight someday,” said Isaacman. “But it’ll certainly be the vehicle that will return humans to the moon and then on to Mars and beyond.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has grand ambitions for Starship, such as ferrying humans to Mars in order to create a colony. But they will hinge on the company remaining on schedule—and, hopefully, learning as much as possible about its EVA spacesuits during Polaris Dawn.

Within one week of Dragon’s splashdown, the firm plans to host a Polaris Dawn mission debrief and question-and-answer session on X Spaces.

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The approval will allow SpaceX to stay on schedule with its Crew-9 mission to rotate astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS), which NASA officials on Friday said is planned for no earlier than August 18.

Falcon 9 was grounded by the FAA following a rare mishap during a July 11 launch of Starlink satellites, its first failure after a streak of more than 300 successful missions.

SpaceX on Thursday shed more light on the incident. The company traced the anomaly to a cracked sense line that created a liquid oxygen leak within the rocket’s second stage engine. This caused ignition fluid to freeze, preventing the engine from performing a burn that would have placed the satellites in a circular orbit.

Despite the issue, SpaceX said, the engine continued operating as intended through both of its planned burns, but all 20 satellites were lost.

The FAA swiftly grounded Falcon 9 as is standard whenever a launch does not go according to plan. SpaceX submitted a mishap report on the night of the anomaly.

Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew program, said Friday that “SpaceX went above and beyond” in its assessment of the issue, working with NASA to develop a fault tree, review spacecraft telemetry, analyze video, and search for similar issues on other Falcon models.

The company has opted to remove the faulty sense line, which is redundant and not a part of the spacecraft’s safety system, for near-term Falcon 9 launches. It also agreed upon several corrective actions with the FAA that will be detailed in the coming days.

The FAA must still give a final sign-off for Crew-9 to launch, but the blessing to return to flight should allow SpaceX to meet its mission timeline. Stich on Friday said Crew-9 will launch no earlier than August 18 from Launch Complex 39-A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the launch window extending into September.

The mission represents the fourth flight of this particular Falcon. It will launch SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on its 45th mission to the ISS. Once onboard, four crewmembers will spend six months conducting a range of experiments, including studying the physics of neutron stars and the behavior of wildfires on Earth.

The ISS’ two docking ports are occupied by SpaceX’s Crew-8 Dragon capsule and Boeing’s Starliner, the latter of which will need to make way for Crew-9. Complicating matters, however, is the unexpected extension of Starliner’s inaugural crew flight test (CFT), which has left astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the orbital laboratory for nearly two months.

Sources told Ars Technica’s Eric Berger that NASA is considering sending Crew-9 to the ISS with only two astronauts, theoretically making room for Wilmore and Williams to hitch a ride home on SpaceX’s Dragon rather than Starliner.

The scenario is one NASA hopes to avoid. Officials stopped short of calling it a requirement for certification but said that returning the astronauts home on Starliner rather than Dragon is “important” to the program’s goals. According to Stich, teams have finished an approximately monthlong test of Starliner’s thrusters and are working toward a flight readiness review, expected toward the end of next week.

However, Stich also said that NASA has officially handed over the Starliner’s first mission—which was double booked for early next year—to SpaceX. The flight, Starliner-1, will be pushed to no earlier than August 2025, while Falcon 9 and Dragon handle the agency’s tenth commercial crew rotation in February. Starliner-1 will again be double booked with SpaceX Crew-11.

Though SpaceX’s Falcon woes haven’t derailed Crew-9, they may shake up NASA’s busy ISS manifest. The agency is working toward an August 3 launch of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, followed by an August 13 Roscosmos launch. Crew-9 would be next, followed by SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission, originally scheduled for this month.

Beyond that, NASA wants to make a Soyuz ISS crew exchange in September, launch the Europa Clipper probe in October, and facilitate the Axiom-4 private astronaut mission in November.

Given the rapid turnaround following Falcon 9’s rare mishap, Boeing’s Starliner may be a larger culprit than SpaceX in any future delays.

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SpaceX on Saturday unveiled its first-generation extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit, which will be donned by astronauts aboard the Polaris Dawn mission, scheduled for no earlier than this summer. Polaris Dawn—a five-day, four-person orbital mission to research human health both in space and on Earth—is the first of three potential human spaceflights under the Polaris Program.

SpaceX and entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who founded the program in February 2022, held a discussion accompanying the announcement on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk acquired in October..

While the mission has no firm launch date, SpaceX on Saturday confirmed that Polaris Dawn would be the next crewed mission the company will fly.

What Is Polaris?

The Polaris Program is the brainchild of Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of integrated payments provider Shift4 who is also a pilot and astronaut, with more than 7,000 flight hours and multiple experimental and ex-military aircraft ratings. Isaacman in 2012 founded Draken International, a private air force that trains pilots for the U.S. Armed Forces.

Isaacman purchased flights from SpaceX in February 2022 to launch the program and is funding Polaris Dawn himself.

Named after the constellation of three stars more commonly known as the North Star, or Polaris, the program comprises three potential missions, one for each star. The effort aims to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities with an eye toward future missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond. Simultaneously, it will raise funds and advance research into issues facing humanity on Earth, such as cancer.

Polaris Dawn, the first of the three missions, was announced in 2022 and expected to fly later that year. It has since been delayed multiple times, most recently from February to mid-2024, due in part to SpaceX’s development of the specially designed EVA spacesuits.

Polaris Dawn and a second mission without a timeline, simply called Mission II, will be flown using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule. Both vehicles are already in use by NASA and a handful of commercial customers, such as Axiom Space.

Falcon 9, a reusable two-stage rocket, is the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket and has been lauded for driving down launch costs in flying 330 times. Crew Dragon, which is capable of carrying up to seven passengers, in 2020 restored NASA’s ability to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) with the first Commercial Crew rotation mission. It has flown a total of 46 missions, visiting the ISS on 42.

Polaris is expected to culminate in a third mission comprising the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Like Falcon 9, the spacecraft is designed to be fully reusable and has so far attempted three orbital test flights, each more successful than the last.

Isaacman has been outspoken about Polaris’ aim to make human spaceflight accessible to all. The new SpaceX suits, for example, are designed to fit a range of body types and accommodate all spacewalkers.

At the same time, the billionaire aviator is focused on solving problems on Earth. Since its founding, Polaris has worked closely with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and helped fund research into childhood cancer.

Civilians in Space

Polaris Dawn is notable for its four-person crew, which includes the first SpaceX employees expected to actually reach space.

Mission specialist Sarah Gillis oversees the company’s astronaut training program, while mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon manages crew operations. Gillis, trained to be a classical violinist, joined SpaceX in 2015, while Menon is a seven-year NASA veteran. But both have been part of past Crew Dragon flights. Menon in particular was influential in developing Dragon’s crew and emergency response capabilities.

Joining the SpaceX employees will be pilot Scott Poteet, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel with more than 3,200 flying hours in the F-16, A-4, T-38, T-37, T-3, and Alpha Jet.

Isaacman himself will serve as Polaris Dawn mission commander, a role he also filled for  SpaceX’s 2021 Inspiration4 mission: the first all-civilian mission to space. Poteet, who previously served in roles at Isaacson’s companies Shift4 and Draken, was mission director for that flight, which raised $250 million for St. Jude.

To prepare for Polaris Dawn, crewmembers lived inside the decompression chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for two days, summited the 16,800-foot peak of Illinizas Norte volcano in Ecuador, and experienced 9 Gs of force while training on three different kinds of fighter jets.

The mission will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will spend up to five days in orbit, performing about 40 experiments and testing of hardware and software. Like Inspiration4, it is a charitable effort, with the goal of raising additional funds for St. Jude.

“Fifty or 100 years from now, people are going to be jumping in their rockets, and you’re going to have families bouncing around on the moon with their kids at a lunar base,” said Isaacman in an article on the St. Jude website. “If we can accomplish all of that, we sure as heck better tackle childhood cancer along the way.”

Polaris Dawn aims to fly higher than any SpaceX Dragon mission to date, a height that hasn’t been reached since the end of the Apollo program half a century ago.

The crew will also attempt to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown. Isaacman during the discussion on X said the mission will target an apogee of 1,400 kilometers, or about 870 miles, more than double the orbital height reached by Apollo 17. That orbit would place the crew just inside the Van Allen radiation belt, where it hopes to research effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health.

“The benefit of being at this high altitude is that we can better understand the impacts of that environment…on both the human body…as well as on the spacecraft,” said Menon during the discussion on X.

Suit Up

The Dragon capsule will complete seven elliptical orbits until reaching its apogee before descending to a circular orbit at about 700 kilometers (435 miles). At that altitude, crewmembers will attempt the first commercial spacewalk. It would also be the first time four astronauts have been exposed to the vacuum of space at the same time, according to SpaceX.

The spacewalk will mark the first use of SpaceX’s EVA spacesuit in low-Earth orbit, a key milestone that is expected to inform future iterations of the design for long-duration missions.

It’s an evolution of SpaceX’s Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit that has been modified to enable both intra and extravehicular use. In other words, personnel won’t need to change clothes when moving from the confines of the spacecraft to the harsh environment of space.

The EVA suit adds greater mobility, seals and pressure valves, a helmet camera, and textile-based thermal material, which regulates suit temperature and can be controlled using a dial. Boots were constructed from the same thermal material used to shield Falcon and Dragon from exposure.

“There was a lot of work on both the materials of the suit, developing a whole new layer that we needed to add for thermal management as well as looking at the thermal condition for the crewmembers themselves, and making sure that they were at a comfortable temperature inside the suit,” said Chris Drake, manager of SpaceX’s spacesuit team, on Saturday.

The 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor designed to reduce glare as well as a state-of-the-art, heads-up display (HUD). The HUD is active only during spacewalks and displays spacesuit pressure, temperature, and humidity, as well as a mission clock to track how long the astronauts are exposed to the vacuum of space.

Already, SpaceX is developing a second-generation EVA suit for missions to the moon and Mars. It estimates that millions of suits will be required to one day build a lunar base or Martian city.

“This is important because we are going to get to the moon and Mars one day, and we’re going to have to get out of our vehicles and out of the safety of the habitat to explore and build and repair things,” Isaacman said during the discussion on X.

The Dragon capsule has also required modifications to prepare for the landmark spacewalk. SpaceX on Saturday said a structure called “Skywalker” has been attached near the capsule’s hatch to act as a mobility aid. Handrails and foot rails have been installed inside the spacecraft, with a ladder interface added to the hatch opening.

SpaceX also installed a cabin pressurization system that allows the interior of the capsule to withstand the vacuum of space as air is sucked out during the spacewalk. A repressurization system will stabilize it once the astronauts return.

Why It Matters

In addition to achieving the first commercial spacewalk and the highest orbital altitude ever recorded, Polaris Dawn hopes to test Starlink laser-based communications in space for the first time. Data from the test could help develop space communications for future missions.

In addition, Polaris and SpaceX selected 38 scientific experiments from 23 partner institutions—including NASA, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University—intended to advance the understanding of human health in space and on Earth.

The crew will use ultrasound to study decompression sickness, for example, and will research spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome: a disease unique to humans who fly in space that can have severe debilitating effects. Upon landing, astronauts will undergo tests to study anemia—an unavoidable effect of traveling to space—and other conditions that might impact humans on Earth.

The scientific aims of the Polaris Program differ from the commercial spaceflight ventures offered by companies such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which could be classified more aptly as space tourism operations.

Tickets for those companies’ orbital and suborbital offerings, some of which involve research, can range from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to the millions. Isaacman and SpaceX’s Inspiration4, meanwhile, raised a quarter of a billion dollars for cancer research.

Isaacman has been particularly outspoken when it comes to accessibility in spaceflight. And by taking on much of the risk himself, the billionaire businessman has lessened the pressure on SpaceX. Isaacman’s funding of Polaris Dawn has allowed the company to focus on developing the spacesuits and other technology necessary to ensure the mission runs smoothly.

Polaris Dawn also represents a critical juncture for SpaceX’s Starship, the lynchpin of the company’s planned human spaceflight offerings. The largest rocket ever built is not quite ready to fly humans. But when it is, the third Polaris mission is expected to be its maiden voyage.

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The post What Is Polaris Dawn? Breaking Down the Upcoming SpaceX Mission appeared first on FLYING Magazine.