Aug. 22 (UPI) – SpaceX unveiled the Crew Dragon capsules that will take part in the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 astronaut missions on August 27 and September 4.
The capsules were rolled out of the Florida manufacturing facility on Wednesday, and SpaceX announced on social media that they were “ready to fly.”
Polaris Dawn is the first of three private missions funded by billionaire tech owner Jared Isaacman. He will conduct the Dawn flight with veteran pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.
The flight is expected to be the first private spacewalk and will take the crew more than 800 miles from Earth, the farthest a human has flown from Earth since NASA’s Apollo missions.
“After more than two years of training, we are excited to embark on this mission,” Isaacman, who will serve as the mission’s commander, said in a statement Monday. “During our mission, we aim to inspire humanity to look up and imagine what we can accomplish here on Earth and in the worlds beyond our own.”
The Dragon capsule does not have an airlock, so the spacewalk will take place closer to Earth, 435 miles from the surface. Since all four astronauts will be exposed to the vacuum of space during the walk, they will all be wearing their spacesuits during this time. They will be testing SpaceX’s new spacesuits at this time, designed for long-duration space travel.
During their five-day journey, the astronauts will conduct medical and health experiments as the capsule flies past the Van Allen radiation belt, which has higher levels of radiation than in lower orbits.
