Courtesy of New Scientist
On Tuesday, September 10, 2024, the first-ever private spacewalk was conducted. With Starlink, a laser-based communications system, Falcon 9 launched Polaris Dawn at 5:23 a.m. EST. The spacecraft was launched to a low orbit at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew consisted of Jared Isaacman, the mission commander; Scott Poteet, the mission pilot; Sarah Gillis, the mission specialist; and Anna Menon, another mission specialist and the medical officer.
Starlink is a private satellite company founded by SpaceX, whose founder is Elon Musk. The company’s purpose is to provide low-cost wifi to less accessible areas, such as remote access areas. It is essentially a constellation of satellites that orbit Earth in order to reduce latency, the round trip data time from satellite to user, and support high data activities due to its low-Earth orbit. Starlink has expanded greatly since its beginning on May 23, 2019, when they launched 60 satellites on a SpaceX rocket. This mission’s astronauts will be the first ones to test out SpaceX’s suits as well.
The crew, Crew Dragon, stayed in space orbit for five days in order to achieve the highest Earth orbit ever flown at around 870 miles. Crew Dragon is the first commercial extravehicular activity and laser-based communication in space. This mission helped to conduct scientific research that could advance human health on Earth as well as our understanding of human health during future longer space flights. The crew began investigating long-term spaceflight and space radiation’s effect on humans since the rocket traveled through the Van Allen radiation belt and will continue to do research on this matter to increase awareness and information for health protocol in space.
Over the course of the mission, several major goals were accomplished during the mission. One goal, which was performed on the third day, was to do the first-ever commercial spacewalk. Isaacman and Gillis opened the latch and completed a remarkable spacewalk. “Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said as he emerged from the hatch. In response, SpaceX ground crews in Hawthorne, California, could be heard on a livestream bursting into applause.
While this occurred, Poteet and Menon tested the durability and mobility of the SpaceX space-walk spacesuits. These suits are more advanced than the suits that were previously used because they provide more mobility and have more scalability for different body types. These new details were set in place in order to bring people one step closer to give another step forward in accomplishing the goal of getting humanity on Mars. In order to do so, a vast amount of spacesuits would be needed for people all over Earth.
Even though only two members of the crew performed the walk, the whole cabin was depressurized because of the lack of an airlock, unlike the International Space Station, in order to test out the SpaceX spacesuits and see if they were reliable for providing oxygen over the course of 20 minutes. Another goal of this mission was to transmit a message to SpaceX’s large number of satellites back down to Earth.
Apart from the breakthrough science that was conducted on this mission, each of the crew members found a way to add their personal touch to space exploration. Anna Menon read a children’s book she co-authored with her two children from orbit. Her son and daughter listened to her book reading from Earth. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, recorded herself performing music from Star Wars on her violin. She was accompanied by her students from El Sistema, an organization that provides music education.
After the successful completion of these missions, the team returned to Earth on September 15th, 2024, splashing into the Gulf of Mexico by Florida’s Tortugas Islands. A recovery ship retrieved the spacecraft and the crew, bringing the most ambitious commercial spaceflight to a close.
