SpaceX's next private astronaut launch is scheduled for this summer, and a key component crucial to its success has finally been revealed.
The mission, Polaris Dawn, is about to perform the first extravehicular activity (EVA) tasks to be carried out by private astronauts, meaning SpaceX will have to build its own spacesuit that can protect wearers from the harsh environment of the space. Now we've finally gotten our first look at the design.
The new suit was unveiled Saturday (May 4) on SpaceX's website and social media channels. The announcement was accompanied by a that afternoon discussion about 'spaces' with SpaceX engineers and Polaris Dawn crew members on X, formerly Twitter, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk bought in 2022.
Related: The crew of Polaris Dawn prepares for the world's first private spacewalk with SpaceX
SpaceX's EVA suit is very similar to the company's IVA (intravehicular activity) suit, which is designed to be worn inside spacecraft during launches and landings, but not in the vacuum of space. The new EVA suits feature material and joint improvements intended to increase astronauts' mobility while protecting them from the cold, airless void outside their spacecraft.
"A lot of work went into both the materials of the suit - developing a whole new layer that we had to add for thermal management - and looking at the thermal status of the crew members themselves, and making sure they are at the right temperature goods. a comfortable temperature in the suit," SpaceX space suit team manager Chris Drake said during the discussion about
The suits also include technology used in other parts of SpaceX's production range. "We have a lot of different resources available to us here," Drake said. "There's some thermal material that we ended up using on the boot that was actually developed for Falcon and Dragon, and it's used on the intermediate stage of Falcon and on the trunk of Dragon."
Drake also described a new heads-up display in the helmet design, allowing astronauts to view data on their suit's internal temperature, humidity and pressure; the display also shows a mission clock to monitor the duration of certain EVA tasks. "Aesthetically it may look similar to the IVA, but what they did under the hood is extraordinary," Polaris Dawn mission commander Jared Isaacman said during the discussion. In partnership with SpaceX, Isaacman is also financing the mission.
The billionaire previously funded and commanded SpaceX's 2021 commercial Inspiration4 mission, its first fully civilian spaceflight. For Inspiration4, in addition to in-flight research, Isaacman was also motivated to charter the flight in an effort to raise money for the pediatric cancer research center St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Polaris Dawn, the first of three possible missions for Isaacman's Polaris program, also raises money for St. Jude's, and aims to take human spaceflight to a new level. "The Polaris program will include up to three missions," Isaacman said Saturday, "culminating in the first crewed flight of Starship."
Related: Meet the four private Polaris Dawn astronauts that SpaceX will launch into orbit this year
Isaacman will be joined on Polaris Dawn by retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Scott "Kidd" Poteet, who will serve as a mission pilot, and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both chief operations engineers at SpaceX. The quartet hopes this flight will push the boundaries of space travel, taking them higher than any human has flown since the last Apollo moon landing mission more than 50 years ago.
Menon described the mission's flight profile and timeline during the May 4 discussion on X:
"We will essentially launch into a highly elliptical orbit where our perigee is at about 120 miles, but our apogee is at about 750 miles. We will then, after a number of orbits, increase our apogee to about 850 miles... It advantage of being at this high altitude is that we can better understand the impact of that environment - that higher radiation environment, for example - on both the human body and on the spacecraft. After a number of orbits there, we will complete all of it research that we planned to do, and then we will culminate back to a scenic coastal orbit of about 700 kilometers, where we will complete the rest of our mission objectives, including the spacewalk.
Polaris Dawn will last five days, during which time the crew plans to conduct up to 40 experiments. For example, the team plans to x-ray radiation in the Van Allen Belts - ring-shaped zones of energetically charged particles around Earth - investigate the mechanisms that cause motion sickness in space and test hardware including the new EVA suit and the Crew Dragon capsule itself.
Because the original Crew Dragon design does not have an airlock, the entire cabin must be depressurized for the crew to perform EVA duties. This led to major adjustments that made the capsule interior able to withstand the harsh vacuum. SpaceX also added a nitrogen repressurization system for completing the mission's EVA tasks. Furthermore, handrails and footrests were installed in the spacecraft, and a ladder interface was implemented at the hatch opening to facilitate astronaut disembarkation.
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Instead of equipping each Polaris Dawn astronaut with an IVA flight suit and a new EVA suit, the crew will don SpaceX's EVA spacesuit for both launch and landing, as well as during the EVA mission.
"We will ventilate the cabin for vacuuming and then we will undertake an EVA operation where we hope to learn a great deal about our suits and the operation that comes with it," said Isaacman, adding: "It is the first commercial EVA It's the first time that no government astronauts are on such a mission. And that's important because one day we're going to have to get out of our vehicles, out of the safety of a habitat and explore , build and repair.
"And that means that the knowledge for spacewalks and EVAs must go beyond just the little knowledge we have today."
