Six years after sending a Tesla car into space, then testing a whole range of rockets and spaceships, SpaceX wants to reach a new milestone. The American company founded by billionaire Elon Musk is refining its calculations before its first manned flight of the Polaris program, called “Polaris Dawn”, which is scheduled to take off on Friday, September 6 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (United States). SpaceX has twice announced the postponement of the launch, due to a “helium leak”.
The mission, unprecedented in many ways, aims in particular to better understand the effects of space radiation on the human body, in addition to testing a curious laser communication system as well as an innovative suit. Franceinfo takes a look back at the outlines of this new 100% private space epic.
1Billionaire behind program to be part of crew
Four people have been selected to board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and take part in the mission, which is expected to last up to five days. They are American pilot Scott Poteet, 50, retired lieutenant colonel of the American Air Force, who flew for 20 years aboard the most sophisticated aircraft. Like the rest of the crew, he followed an accelerated astronaut training, lasting a little more than six months, compared to three to four years for NASA missions, he explained in an interview at his former university in late 2023. “When it comes to flying, being an astronaut is the top of the pyramid.”confided this seasoned hunter, veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Two SpaceX employees, engineers Anna Menon, 38, and Sarah Gillis, 30, will also be at the helm of this mission. The Dragon capsule holds no secrets for them, since they worked on its development for several years. “This is the biggest business trip of my life”rejoiced Anna Menon on the X network, who will also be in charge of medical tests on board.
Finally, to command this crew, it is none other than the financier of the Polaris program, the businessman and pilot Jared Isaacman, 41 years old, who completes this list. “I didn’t think I’d go back to spacehe confided to the Washington Post in October 2022, after having overseen the first 100% tourist space flight in history, Inspiration4, in September 2021. With Polaris, we’re going to do a whole series of technological tests, and do things that haven’t been done for 50 years.”
2 The Dragon ship aims for a maximum altitude of 1,400 km
Once successfully launched, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is expected to propel the Crew Dragon ship far, far above ground, to an orbit 1,400 kilometers from Earth. That’s 3.5 times the distance from the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits at an average altitude of just under 400 km, according to NASA. If all goes well, it will be the “highest flight of any Dragon mission to date, with the goal of reaching the highest Earth orbit”explain the Polaris program executives on their website.
This dizzying altitude has not been reached by manned flights since the time of the US government’s Apollo missions in the 1970s, which went well beyond the atmosphere and sent the first humans to the Moon. Unless another private flight is set up in record time, we will have to wait until NASA’s Artemis 2 mission (in September 2025 at the earliest) to see astronauts rise to such a distance from Earth, as the American channel CNN points out.
3 Astronauts at risk of exposure to high levels of radiation
By reaching an altitude of over 1,000 kilometers, the crew will make an incursion into thethe inner band of the Earth’s “Van Allen belts.” As the European Space Agency (ESA) explains in a post, these are bands where very fast particles, mainly protons and electrons, coming from the Sun and interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere are trapped. More specifically, the Polaris Dawn mission will spend several days in the inner radiation belt, which begins between 300 and 1,000 km in altitude and stretches up to 10,000 km.
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Operating in this band is far from safe for astronauts, “surrounded by death”as Jared Isaacman told CNBC. According to ESA engineer Piers Jiggens, prolonged exposure to radiation can lead to, in the short term, “central nervous system disruption, cataracts and other vision disorders” as well as bone marrow disorders. An increased risk of cancer is also to be feared. “There is indeed some risk, particularly in the inner belt”he warns.
To ensure that the Dragon ship’s devices function properly against radiation, Jared Isaacman revealed to the American press that the onboard computers had been attached together and then “bombarded with rays” in an oncology laboratory, in order to determine their resistance.
4 On the program: a spacewalk and the testing of a futuristic suit
The astronauts have a busy schedule for their five-day mission in orbit. On the third day, after a controlled fall to about 700 km altitude, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis are even scheduled to take part in a “extravehicular activity”. Understand: an excursion outside the capsule, connected by a sort of umbilical cord. It will also be the first commercial spacewalk, far from government programs.
Since the ship is not equipped with an airlock, as is the case for the ISS for example, the entire cockpit of the Dragon will be exposed to the vacuum of space once the hatch is open, and therefore at risk of “decompression syndrome”, as sometimes happens to divers.
To protect themselves, the mission crew will be equipped with a brand new suit developed by SpaceX. Like Tony Stark in the saga Iron Manastronauts will see vital information displayed on the wall of their helmet, which is also covered with a layer of copper and indium. The materials used for the boots and the suit must be able to cope with the significant temperature changes of a space mission, inside and outside the ship. This equipment was tested until the last moment, with a final validation in mid-July.
5 This is the first in a series of three trade missions
With Polaris Dawn, Jared Isaacman wants to lay the foundations for other, even more ambitious space adventures. His program aims to to test all the technologies that SpaceX will one day need for much further travel. The second mission, whose launch date has not been announced, aims to go even higher in order to continue the tests of Polaris Dawn. The third part will represent “the first manned space flight aboard Starship”SpaceX’s fully reusable system, to join “Earth’s orbit, the Moon, the planet Mars and beyond”.
Because the goal of the Polaris program is not limited to space travel, as evidenced by the importance of equipment testing. “Building a base on the Moon and a city on Mars will require thousands of space suits”for example, predict its designers, who are already planning towards “future long-term missions”The tone is set.