The launch of the private space mission Polaris Dawn will not take place before August 26, according to a message published on its official account on the social network X.
Polaris Dawn Mission Objectives
The Polaris Dawn mission is funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who already flew into space in 2021. It is scheduled to be the first of three flights as part of the Polaris program. As part of the program, the Crew Dragon will conduct a solo flight into Earth orbit with four people.
The upcoming flight has three main goals. First, Crew Dragon must reach an orbit with an apogee of 1,400 km, breaking the altitude record set by the Gemini 11 mission in 1966, when it reached an altitude of 1,372 kilometers (the Apollo missions traveled much greater distances from Earth, but they did so on missions to the Moon, not in Earth orbit).
Second, dozens of scientific experiments will be conducted during the flight. Because Crew Dragon’s orbit at apogee is close to Earth’s inner radiation belt, the goal of many experiments is to study the effects of elevated radiation levels on the astronauts’ health.
Finally, the Polaris Dawn mission will include the first-ever private spacewalk. Isaacman will be there, as will mission specialist Sarah Gillis. The operation will take place at an altitude of 500 kilometers, which is comparable to the orbital altitude of the Hubble telescope. Since Crew Dragon does not have a separate airlock, the astronauts will have to depressurize the entire spacecraft to enter space.
New flight date for the Polaris Dawn mission
Polaris Dawn’s flight date has been postponed several times since its announcement in 2022. Initially, the probe was scheduled to launch in late 2022. Then the flight was postponed to 2023. Then to 2024. The postponement of the mission was due to its technical complexity and the need to manufacture new spacesuits, which proved to be a greater challenge than originally thought.
By the summer of 2024, the problems with the spacesuits were finally resolved. In June, the Polaris Dawn crew tested them in a vacuum chamber to see how the suits would perform in space-like conditions. The tests were successful.
But even after that, the mission was repeatedly postponed. First, the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket ended in an accident. This meant that the flight date had to be postponed by a month.
We are aiming to launch Polaris Dawn no earlier than August 26. pic.twitter.com/tkkiRke64a
— Polaris (@PolarisProgram) 7 August 2024
Now the mission has become hostage to the Starliner situation. NASA recently announced its intention to delay the launch of the Crew-9 mission, giving SpaceX a higher priority. In this situation, Polaris Dawn had to be brought forward again to give SpaceX time to prepare. Now it is reported that the mission will launch on August 26 at the earliest. However, it is possible that this will not be the last postponement. It is quite possible that SpaceX will still send Crew-9 into space first and deal with Polaris Dawn after that.
