SpaceX postpones historic mission featuring first private spacewalk

KENNEDY SPACE CENTRE, United States - SpaceX postponed once more its attempt at launching a daring orbital expedition featuring an all-civilian crew that is aiming to carry out the first-ever spacewalk by private citizens.

The Polaris Dawn mission, organised by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, had been set to lift off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida during a four-hour window early on Aug 28.

But SpaceX announced late on Aug 27 it was pushing back the launch plans “due to unfavourable weather forecasted in Dragon’s splashdown areas off the coast of Florida,” in a message on X.

Mr Isaacman later added on X that, because the spaceship won’t rendezvous with the International Space Station and has limited consumables on board, it was particularly constrained by the forecast during the splashdown window.

“As of now, conditions are not favourable tonight or tomorrow, so we’ll assess day by day,” he said.

The timing of the next launch could be further complicated by the fact the first stage booster of another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had sent a batch of Starlink satellites into orbit tipped over and exploded during a landing attempt on a waiting droneship.

Although landing the booster is a secondary consideration, the reusability of the entire rocket system is core to SpaceX’s business model, and the loss snapped a three-year-streak of successful first stage landings.

SpaceX announced it was standing down from launching the next set of Starlink satellites while it reviewed the data.

An earlier attempt to launch Polaris Dawn on Aug 27 was

scrapped due to a helium leak

on a line connecting the tower to the rocket.

High radiation zone

Riding atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the SpaceX Dragon capsule is set to reach a peak altitude of 1,400 kilometres - higher than any crewed mission in more than half a century, since the Apollo era.

Mission commander Mr Isaacman will guide his four-member team through the mission’s centrepiece: the first-ever spacewalk carried out by non-professional astronauts, equipped with sleek, newly developed SpaceX extravehicular activity (EVA) suits.

Rounding out the team are mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant-colonel; mission specialist Sarah Gillis, a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX; and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon, also a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX.

The quartet underwent more than two years of training in preparation for the landmark mission, logging hundreds of hours on simulators as well as skydiving, centrifuge training, scuba diving, and summiting an Ecuadorian volcano.

Polaris Dawn is set to be the first of three missions under the Polaris programme, a collaboration between Mr Isaacman, the founder of tech company Shift4 Payments, and SpaceX.

Mr Isaacman declined to reveal his total investment in the project, though reports suggest he paid around US$200 million (S$260 million) for the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, the first all-civilian orbital mission.

Polaris Dawn will reach its highest altitude on its first day, venturing briefly into the Van Allen radiation belt, a region teeming with high-energy charged particles that can pose health risks to humans over extended periods.

On day three, the crew will don their state-of-the-art EVA spacesuits - outfitted with heads-up displays, helmet cameras, and advanced joint mobility systems - and take turns to venture outside their spacecraft in twos.

Each will spend 15 to 20 minutes in space, around 700km above the Earth’s surface.

Also on their to-do list are testing laser-based satellite communication between the spacecraft and Starlink, SpaceX’s more than 6,000-strong constellation of internet satellites, in a bid to boost space communication speeds, and conducting nearly 40 scientific experiments.

After six days in space, the mission will conclude with the splashdown off the coast of Florida. AFP