THE SpaceX has postponed the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission once again : a daring and risky journey to Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts with a crew of four civilians. The trip also aims to conduct the first commercial spacewalk.
The first postponement occurred after a helium leak in ground equipment at the Kennedy Space Center, which prevented the spacecraft from taking off in the early hours of Tuesday (27).
The launch was briefly rescheduled for early Wednesday morning (28), before a new cancellation due to unfavorable weather conditions for the crew’s return to Earth.
A new release date has not yet been confirmed.
According to Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payments platform Shift4, who is funding the mission with SpaceX and is a member of the crew, the ground system issues have been resolved and the weather for the launch looks great. However, when the crew returns, they will also need calm waters and skies.
The current forecast for the planned mission duration of five days from now has led SpaceX to abandon launch attempts on Wednesday or Thursday (29).
“Due to unfavorable weather forecast at Dragon landing sites off the coast of Florida, we are now suspending Falcon 9 launch opportunities from Polaris Dawn tonight and tomorrow. Teams will continue to monitor the weather for favorable launch and return conditions,” SpaceX posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Due to unfavorable weather forecast in Dragon’s splashdown areas off the coast of Florida, we are now standing down from tonight and tomorrow’s Falcon 9 launch opportunities of Polaris Dawn. Teams will continue to monitor weather for favorable launch and return conditions
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 28, 2024
In an interview with CNN Earlier this month, Isaacman said finding the ideal weather to return to Earth after the brief trip into orbit is crucial.
“We have five, six days — maybe you can stretch it — of life support on the vehicle,” Isaacman said. “So you have to be sure about fault tolerance and redundancy in your systems. You have to be sure about the weather.”
The crew of four is in quarantine awaiting launch.
Once a new launch date is set, SpaceX plans to stream the event live on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk bought in 2022.
The crew will travel to orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket inside the igloo-shaped SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which measures about 4 meters in diameter.
SpaceX’s first commercial spacewalk attempt
Polaris Dawn is the brainchild of SpaceX and Isaacman, who made his first foray into spaceflight with the Inspiration4 mission in September 2021.
This flight, however, is not just a fun ride.
Isaacman and his crewmates — including close friend and former U.S. Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, as well as SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis — hope to rack up a number of superlatives on this five-day mission.
First, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule aims to take the crew to record heights for a regular orbit around Earth, surpassing the milestone set by NASA’s Gemini 11 mission in 1966, which reached 1,373 kilometers.
If successful, Polaris Dawn would surpass that height by about 20 miles.
The mission also aims to reach the mark of the furthest distance a human has flown since NASA’s Apollo missions (1968-1972) — which took astronauts 400,000 kilometers to the Moon, instead of stopping in Earth’s orbit.
Polaris Dawn may also mark the furthest point a woman has ever gone into space.
To kick off the third day of the mission, the civilian crew, orbiting at a lower altitude, about 700 kilometers above Earth, will attempt a historic spacewalk.
The effort will be dangerous, exposing all four crew members and the interior of Crew Dragon to the vacuum of space. Such a situation could make it difficult to reseal the hatch on Crew Dragon due to pressure differences. And exposure to the vacuum could cause toxins to be released from the material when the cabin is repressurized, though SpaceX says it has taken steps to prevent this.
This content was originally published in Mission to Earth’s radiation belt is postponed by SpaceX without a new date on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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