SpaceX has launched a crew of four private astronauts for the first-ever private spacewalk.
A billionaire entrepreneur, a veteran pilot and two SpaceX employees are using the company’s new spacesuits and redesigned spacecraft for the mission, which lifted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday morning.
It’s the most risky private space mission ever. Only well-trained and well-funded government astronauts have ever conducted a spacewalk.
Last month’s launch was postponed hours before liftoff because of a small helium leak in SpaceX’s ground equipment on the launch pad.
The company fixed the leak, but then failed to recover the booster during another mission, causing U.S. regulators to ground Falcon 9 flights and further delaying Polaris launches.
“The safety of the crew is paramount and this mission involves more risks than usual as it will be the furthest human journey from Earth since the Apollo missions and the first commercial spacewalk!” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote last month on his social media site X. Mission.
Since the International Space Station (ISS) was built in 2000, about 270 spacewalks have been conducted, 16 of which have been by Chinese astronauts at the Beijing Tiangong Space Station.
The SpaceX mission, called Polaris Dawn, will spend about five days in an elliptical orbit that will pass within 190 kilometers (118 miles) of Earth and travel up to 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) away. This will be the furthest humans have traveled since the end of the U.S. Apollo lunar program in 1972.
Now that the spacecraft has launched, it will begin a “two-day readiness process” to prepare the crew for a spacewalk scheduled for Thursday.
