SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew to attempt first-ever commercial spacewalk

The Polaris Dawn mission will involve a four-person crew. Credit: CNN

A team of four civilians taking part in SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission are to make history by pulling off the first-ever commercial spacewalk.

The rocket is scheduled to take off from Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre, in Florida, between 3.38 and 7.09am (local time) on Wednesday,

The five-day mission, called Polaris Dawn, will take the crew into an oval-shaped orbit, reaching up to 870 miles (1,400 kilometres) from Earth, deep into the Van Allen radiation belts.

The SpaceX rocket is due to be launched on Wednesday. Credit: CNN

No human has ventured this far into space or passed through such a radiation environment since NASA's Apollo missions in the 1960s.

SpaceX said on social media on Monday that it delayed the launch to take “a closer look at a ground-side helium leak” on a piece of equipment designed to detach from the rocket during takeoff.

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of Shift4, will be making his second space trip with Polaris Dawn. His first was the less risky mission in 2021, dubbed Inspiration4.

Polaris Dawn is part of three missions with SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, aimed at testing new technologies that will see humans live and work on other planets.

Joining Isaacman on Polaris Dawn are SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who will be the first from the company to join an orbital mission.

Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a former US Air Force pilot and longtime friend of Isaacman, completes the crew.

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What are the objectives for the space flight?

Shortly after launch, the crew will prepare for a high-risk spacewalk using Extravehicular Activity (EVA) suits developed by SpaceX in just two and a half years.

If successful, this spacewalk will be the first ever carried out by civilians.

The crew will then focus on about 40 scientific experiments before the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule returns to Earth.

Re-entry is said to be challenging, as the spacecraft's exterior will face temperatures exceeding 1,649 degrees Celsius before it deploys parachutes to slow its descent into the ocean.

The mission is expected to last around five days.

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