Written by Joy Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – SpaceX’s attempt to conduct the first-ever private spacewalk next week will test groundbreaking equipment including thin spacesuits and a cabin without an airlock in one of the riskiest missions yet for Elon Musk’s space company.
A billionaire businessman, a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX employees are scheduled to launch on Tuesday aboard a modified Crew Dragon capsule, before embarking on a 20-minute spacewalk 434 miles (700 kilometers) into space two days later.
Until now, spacewalks have only been attempted by government astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.
SpaceX’s five-day mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn (NYSE: ), will fly in an elliptical orbit, passing as close as 190 kilometers (118 miles) to Earth and as far as 1,400 kilometers (870 miles), the farthest any human has traveled since the end of the U.S. Apollo moon program in 1972.
The crew, including billionaire Jared Isaacman, will wear SpaceX’s new slim spacesuits in a Crew Dragon vehicle that has been modified so it can open its hatch into the vacuum of space — an unusual process that eliminates the need for an airlock.
“They’re pushing the boundaries in multiple ways,” retired astronaut Garrett Reisman said in an interview. “They’re going to go to a much higher altitude, with a much more severe radiation environment than we’ve been in since Apollo.”
The mission was funded by Isaacman, founder of the e-payments company Shift4. He declined to disclose how much he spent, but estimates put it at more than $100 million.
He will be joined by mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both senior engineers at the company.
For SpaceX, which has pioneered cheap, reusable rockets and expensive private spaceflight, the mission represents an opportunity to develop technologies that could be used on the moon and Mars.
Far from the protective bubble of Earth’s atmosphere, the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s electronics, shields and spacesuits will be tested as they pass through parts of the Van Allen Belt, a region where charged particles streaming mainly from the sun can disrupt satellite electronics and affect human health.
“This is an additional risk that you don’t face when you stay in low Earth orbit and go up to the International Space Station,” Reisman said.
Not an ordinary space flight
The Polaris spacewalk will take place on the third day of the mission, but preparations will begin about 45 hours before that.
The entire spacecraft cabin will be depressurized, exposing it to the vacuum of space. While only two astronauts will remain outside the cabin, attached to an oxygen line, the entire crew will rely on their spacesuits for life support.
Days before the spacewalk, the crew will begin a “pre-breath” process to fill the cabin with pure oxygen and remove any nitrogen from the air.
Nitrogen, if present in the bloodstream of astronauts in space, can form bubbles, block blood flow and lead to decompression sickness, known as “the bends,” as seen in divers who return to the surface too quickly.
The crew will use an ultrasound device to monitor any bubble formation, one of several instruments that will be used on the mission to inform dozens of science experiments, giving researchers a rare look at how astronauts fare on the moon or elsewhere in deep space.
“It gives us a very unique opportunity to test these compounds in a very unique environment,” said Emmanuel Urquieta, vice chair of space medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Central Florida.
While the safety of astronauts on NASA missions is strictly overseen by the agency, there are no U.S. standards or laws for spaceflight safety on private missions like Polaris.
SpaceX and Polaris crew officials said during a news conference Monday that they had planned for a range of contingency scenarios if something went wrong during the mission, such as an oxygen leak or a hatch door failing to reseal, but they did not elaborate on what those scenarios were.
Reisman said he knows the Polaris crew and believes they are prepared to handle any unexpected incidents.
“But there’s not much room for error,” he said.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.