Two of Polaris Dawn’s four astronauts could make history today by performing the first-ever commercial spacewalk, about 700 kilometers (435 miles) above our planet. Mission leader and funder Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis will leave the confines and safety of the Crew Dragon capsule for 15 and 20 minutes, respectively.
The other two crew members, Scott Poteat and Anna Menon, will remain inside the vehicle to monitor the spacewalkers’ condition and make sure everything is okay. SpaceX will broadcast the event live on its website and on X at 4:50 a.m. Eastern Time. If the spacewalk has to be canceled, the astronauts will have another opportunity on September 13 at the same time.
As the New York Times points out, Crew Dragon has no airlock like the International Space Station, so astronauts will have to vent all the air out of the vehicle before opening one of its hatches. All four will wear the company’s extravehicular activity (EVA) suits, which are upgraded and tougher versions of its suits for intravehicular activity (IVA).
SpaceX’s EVAs come with new joints that can flex and rotate, allowing for greater mobility. Their helmets are equipped with head-up displays (HUD) and cameras, and the spacesuits have a Faraday layer that can protect them from electric fields.
The Polaris Dawn crew’s spacewalk will put the suit through a period of testing as they place it in the harsh environment of outer space while conducting mobility tests.
“The development of this suit and the execution of the spacewalk will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions as life becomes multiplanetary,” the Polaris Dawn website reads.
The entire operation, from beginning to the time the astronauts close the hatch to re-pressurize the Crew Dragon, will last two hours.
The civilian mission launched on the morning of Sept. 10 after several delays.
In addition to completing the first commercial spacewalk, the mission has other objectives, including sending a crew farther than any Dragon mission has ever done and farther than any mission since the Apollo program, even reaching parts of the Van Allen radiation belts.
A switch is flicked and, in an instant, every process that spews deadly pollution into the sky is replaced with something clean and sustainable. Sadly, even then, the Earth will still be on the brink of becoming uninhabitable, because we’ve already put so much carbon out there.
If we’re to survive as a species, all that waste needs to be brought back to Earth, and quickly. Proponents of direct air capture believe it’s a key weapon to accomplish that task; its critics say it’s so inefficient that we should try something else first.