Elon Musk on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn launch on August 27: ‘First spacewalk by company, furthest from Earth in 50+ years…’

Billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on August 22 took to social media to post about his company's new space mission — the first-ever private spacewalk.

“This will be the first spacewalk by a commercial company and the furthest from Earth anyone has traveled in over half a century!” Musk, posted on his social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter).

The official SpaceX account too posted a video teasing the launch of the Polaris Dawn program set for launch at 3.38 am August 27 (Tuesday - ET).

The spacewalk, formally known as the Extravehicular Activity (EVA), is planned for the third day of the program, Reuters reported.

So far, only government astronauts from the United States, erstwhile Soviet Union and Russia, the European Space Agency (ESA), Canada and China have conducted spacewalks, the Reuters report added. As many as 270 spacewalks have been conducted outside the International Space Station (ISS) since its inception in 2000. These spacewalks have all used either US and Russian spacesuits, it added.

Four Crew members, First Private Spacewalk

SpaceX's five-day long Polaris Dawn expedition will see four astronauts undertake the world's first private spacewalk, AFP reported. The crew, comprising Mission Commander Jared Isaacman, Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, and Mission pilot Scott Poteet, arrived in Florida on August 19, ahead of their historic takeoff.

A US billionaire, Isaacman is CEO of electronic payment company Shift4 and head of the SpaceX-affiliated Polaris program. He is known for having chartered the ‘Inspiration4’ in 2021, a first all-civilian orbital spaceflight. “It's been two and a half years since we announced the Polaris program. It's been a really exciting journey of development and training,” he said at a press conference on August 19.

Notably, he has jointly invested with SpaceX in the three-mission program, but did not reveal how much, the report added.

The Mission

• A Falcon 9 rocket is set to launch just before dawn on August 27 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will be aboard the Dragon capsule.
• SpaceX developed its first generation of space suits — white and futuristic — for this trip.
• Among the crew are two SpaceX employees — Sarah Gillis, who trained Isaacman for Inspiration4, and Anna Menon, who worked for NASA before joining SpaceX. “I've spent years trying to put myself in the seat of astronauts in space, and I am really looking forward to learning firsthand what that experience is actually like,” Menon said.
• The fourth passenger and pilot Poteet, is a close friend of Isaacman.
• The crew trained intensively, including 2,000 odd hours in a simulator, centrifuge sessions, scuba diving, skydiving and climbing the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador.
• The mission has three main objectives, in addition to the 40 or so experiments that will be conducted on board.

• The first is to reach an altitude of 1,400 km (870 miles), the furthest distance for a space crew since the Apollo lunar missions. It will also make Gillis and Menon the first women to have traveled the farthest from Earth.
• For context, the International Space Station (ISS) is at an altitude of about 400 km, and the distance between the Earth and Moon is 380,000 km, AFP added.
• The second objective is to conduct a laser communication test between the ship and SpaceX's Starlink satellites.
• And the third, above all, once in a lower orbit, the astronauts will carry out the first commercial spacewalk, to be broadcast live on the mission's third day. A pair each will have turns spacewalking.
• A second similar Polaris mission is planned after this trip, and then a planned third trip will be the first crewed flight on SpaceX's massive Starship rocket, currently under development and ultimately intended for trips to the Moon and Mars.
• “Someday, someone could be wearing a version of the suit as they are walking on Mars. It feels like a huge honour to have that opportunity to test it out on this flight. I'd certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the Moon and Mars and venturing out and exploring our solar system. We haven't even scratched the surface yet. There's so much to go out and explore and discover along the way,” said Isaacman.

(With inputs from AFP and Reuters)