by SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission launched early Tuesday, sending a crew of four civilian astronauts into orbit. And hours later they have already made history: achieving the highest orbit around the Earth and surpassing a series of records during the early days of NASA.
The company confirmed that the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying the crew reached its maximum altitude of 1,400.7 kilometers (870 miles) at 9:19 pm ET on Tuesday.
That distance surpassed the record set by NASA’s 1966 Gemini 11 mission, which reached 853 miles (1,373 kilometers) during its journey around Earth.
NASA’s Apollo missions traveled further but did not enter traditional Earth orbit. They were destined for the moon, which lies a quarter of a million miles from our planet. The Polaris Dawn mission is also the furthest traveled by any human since the final Apollo mission in 1972 – and the longest mission into space ever traveled by a woman.
An unprecedented spacewalk
SpaceX and the Polaris Dawn crew may be celebrating their first birthday, but the most dangerous endeavors lie ahead for this five-day mission – designed to push the limits of commercial space travel and help test technologies that SpaceX may use on missions deeper. the cosmos.
As of early Thursday morning, the Polaris Dawn team – including the CEO of Shift4 Payments, Jared Isaacman, the funder of the mission; his close friend and former US Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet; and SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis — will attempt to conduct the first commercial spacewalk.
The groundbreaking event, which is set to begin early on the team’s third day in space, is expected to take place as the team orbits about 435 miles (700 kilometers) above Earth.
Isaacman, Menon, Poteet and Gillis will be exposed to the vacuum of space as their Crew Dragon capsule is ejected and a circular passage opens. And two members of the crew, Gillis and Isaacman, will leave the spacecraft during about two hours that the vehicle is left with an open door into the great expanse.
The crew will only be protected from the unrelenting vacuum by SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity – or EVA – suits. The spacesuits were designed and developed in 2 and a half years, which is extremely fast by aerospace standards.
By comparison, NASA has spent more than a decade trying to replace the aging spacesuits aboard the International Space Station. Those suits were invented 40 years ago.
Canadian Space Agency astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Dave Williams (out of frame), both STS-118 mission specialists, participate in the mission’s first planned extra-vehicular activity (EVA) session as construction continues on the Station International Space August 11, 2007. – SpaceX/NAS
The Crew Dragon team is already putting the crew through a long “pre-breathing” process, which prepares the astronauts’ bodies for the spacewalk. It works by slowly clearing nitrogen from the crew’s blood so that the gas does not swell in their bloodstream as the pressure inside the vehicle changes.
The purpose of the pre-breathing process is to avoid decompression sickness — the same dangerous and potentially fatal illness that scuba divers can experience if they try to surface too quickly.
The pre-breathing protocol performed by the Polaris Dawn crew is completely unlike that performed on the International Space Station. The space station has special airlocks where astronauts can take a quick breather before starting their spacewalks. It only takes a few hours.
However, the Polaris Dawn crew’s pre-breather routine will last about 45 hours, Gillis told CNN, as the oxygen content in the cabin slowly increases and the pressure decreases.
“What’s really cool about this (pre-breathing) profile is that it’s actually, in many ways, much less risky than the standard on the space station,” Gillis told CNN. “It’s like opening a can of soda pop — and you want to open the can (and not have) any of the bubbles come out because the pressure outside the can is equal to what’s inside.”
By lowering the pressure inside Crew Dragon, Gillis said, and putting on their spacesuits just so the ambient pressure is the same as the suit’s pressure—crew members can better mitigate any risk of unwanted bubbles .
The biggest challenge comes when the spacewalk ends: closing the hatch aboard the Crew Dragon capsule, getting pressure back to normal and returning safely to Earth.
“You should be nervous about (this mission),” former NASA astronaut and SpaceX consultant Garrett Reisman told CNN in August. “Anytime you try something for the first time there are significant risks involved. I’ll feel a lot better when they’re back inside with the patch closed and latched.”
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