Polaris Dawn
- 19th Aug 2024
- Author: Edward Turner
Polaris Dawn is a planned private human spaceflight mission. It's operated by SpaceX on behalf of Jared Isaacman, the billionaire funding the Polaris Program. If successful, this mission will undertake the first ever spacewalk on a commercial spaceflight and will achieve the highest Earth orbit by a crewed spacecraft.
The Polaris Dawn Mission
Polaris Dawn is now due to launch early September 2024 on a Falcon 9 rocket, with the four commercial astronauts calling a Crew Dragon capsule home for five days while in space. Funded and commanded by Jared Isaacman, the mission aims to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, similar to a previous mission dubbed Inspiration4, which raised more than $240 million for the charity.
Polaris Dawn also has four main mission parameters:
- This mission hopes to achieve the highest ever Earth orbit. At 1400km, it will beat the previous record by just 32km, set in 1966 by the crew of Gemini 11. After this, the Crew Dragon will lower its apogee to 750km for the remainder of the mission. This flight plan will take the crew through portions of the Van Allen belts, allowing the crew to conduct research on the effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health.
- Polaris Dawn will host the first ever commercial spacewalk at around 700km above the Earth’s surface. This spacewalk also signifies the first use of EVA suits designed by SpaceX, who will use this as a test to confirm the use of these suits for Martian missions.
- This will be the first test of in-space communications using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, which will prove invaluable as humanity continues to spread out into the solar system.
- The crew will conduct scientific research to develop understanding of human health for future long-term space flights, including ultrasounds to test decompression sickness, gathering data on the radiation environment, and research into Spaceflight Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS) – the neurological effects to the eye and linked diseases caused by being in space.
Introducing the Crew
There will be four commercial astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon capsule that will carry the Polaris Dawn mission into orbit, three of whom will be experiencing their first spaceflight.
Jared Isaacman will serve as Mission Commander for Polaris Dawn. This will be his second spaceflight, the first being as Mission Commander of the Inspiration4 mission. Isaacman is the CEO of Shift4, as well as co-founder of Draken International, which not only trains pilots for the United States Armed Forces, but also operates one of the largest fleets of privately owned fighter jets. Isaacman has flown over 100 air shows with the Black Diamond Jet Team, each performance being dedicated to charitable causes.
Scott Poteet will serve as Mission Pilot. He is a retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with over 3,200 flying hours. Poteet has worked with Isaacman for many years as Director of Business Development at Draken International, Vice President of Strategy at Shift4, and Mission Director for the Inspiration4 mission.
Sarah Gillis will be one of two Mission Specialists on Polaris Dawn. She is a Lead Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, responsible for overseeing the company’s astronaut training programme. She directly trained the Inspiration4 commercial astronauts and prepared the NASA astronauts for SpaceX’s Demo-2 and Crew-1 missions.
Anna Menon will be a Mission Specialist and Medical Officer for the mission. She is also a Lead Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, serving in mission control as both a Mission Director and crew communicator. Prior to SpaceX, she worked for seven years at NASA as a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station.
Preparation for the Mission
It takes a lot of training to become an astronaut, even for commercial astronauts, including general preparation for the space environment as well as mission specific training. The Polaris Dawn astronauts have been training since May 2022 in a number of different scenarios. These include:
- Fighter jet training on behalf of Draken International, similar to NASA astronauts.
- Diving training with the U.S. Airforce Academy.
- Skydiving training with the U.S. Airforce Academy, with the four crewmembers earning their jump wings.
- Living for several days in a decompression chamber as part of a study at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre.
- Zero-gravity flight training for testing science and research experiments over twelve parabolic flights (and two more just for fun!)
- Several team-building exercises, including scuba diving and mountaineering.
The crew will have also undergone specific training for their planned historic spacewalk. Luckily, their EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) will not be as complicated as those for astronauts on the International Space Station, who usually spend around five to eight hours per spacewalk. ISS astronauts also need training for the specific jobs they will perform on their EVA, which can range from carrying out experiments in the vacuum of space to repairing parts of the Space Station.
The Polaris Program
Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions in the Polaris Program. Not much is known about the other flights of the programme just yet other than the second mission will again be aboard a Crew Dragon, and the third and final flight aims to be the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship. Additionally, Jared Isaacman will serve as Mission Commander on each flight. Currently the launch date and remaining flight crew remain a mystery.
There is a possibility that one of the mission aims of the second Polaris Program flight will involve the Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble was launched over 30 years ago in 1990 and had the ability to be serviced by Space Shuttle missions. With the decommissioning of the Space Shuttle in 2011, however, there is currently no way to service the aging orbital observatory, or to re-boost its orbit which is decaying due to atmospheric drag. NASA considered this fact in 2009, attaching the Soft Capture Mechanism (SCM) during the last Hubble servicing mission, STS-125. The original plan was that the SCM would allow a mission to rendezvous with Hubble and aid with its safe de-orbit.
In September 2022, however, NASA and SpaceX signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement with the Polaris Program to study the feasibility of using a Crew Dragon capsule to boost Hubble into a higher orbit, thus increasing its operational lifetime. At present, conversations are still ongoing as the risks versus the merits of the Polaris Programs' plan are weighed up.
Future endeavours
The relationship between Jared Isaacman and SpaceX will be one to watch in the coming years, both with the Polaris Program and any future programmes Isaacman funds. If humanity is to extend its presence into space, both nearby and further afield, we need pioneers to push the boundaries of spaceflight and space technology, opening the door perhaps to ordinary people like you and me so we too may one day experience the thrill of orbiting Earth.
Full references / credits:
(Banner) The Polaris Dawn crew, from left to right: Anna Menon, Scott "Kidd" Poteet, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis. Credit: Polaris Program/John Kraus
(1a) Artist’s concept of a crew member performing a spacewalk outside of a Crew Dragon spacecraft. Credit: SpaceX / Polaris Program
(1b) Starlink satellite. Credit: SpaceX
(1c) The Van Allen Belts around the Earth. Credit: NASA
(2a) Dragon simulations at SpaceX headquarters. Credit: SpaceX
(2b) Zero-gravity research flight. Credit: Polaris Program / John Kraus
(3) Decompression sickness risk characterization study. Credit: Polaris Program / John Kraus
(4) Artistic rendering of a Starship launch. Credit: SpaceX
(5) Polaris Dawn mission patch. Credit: Polaris Program
