SpaceX Prepares for Historic Private Spacewalk Mission with Billionaire Crew

SpaceX is gearing up for a groundbreaking spacewalk mission with a crew of private astronauts, including a billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot, and two SpaceX employees. Scheduled to launch on Tuesday at 3:38 a.m. ET (0738 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the mission aims to achieve the first-ever private spacewalk using SpaceX’s new spacesuits and redesigned spacecraft.

The launch had been previously postponed due to a small helium leak in ground equipment and a subsequent grounding of the Falcon 9 rocket by U.S. regulators due to an unrelated issue. SpaceX has addressed these issues, and the mission, now designated Polaris Dawn, is set to proceed. However, the weather forecast provides only a 40% chance of favorable conditions, with additional launch windows at 5:23 a.m. and 7:09 a.m. on the same day.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, emphasized the mission’s significance on social media, noting its higher risk due to its unprecedented nature. “Crew safety is absolutely paramount, and this mission carries more risk than usual, as it will be the furthest humans have traveled from Earth since Apollo and the first commercial spacewalk!” he wrote.

The Polaris Dawn mission will last approximately five days, traveling in an oval-shaped orbit ranging from as close as 190 km (118 miles) to as far as 1,400 km (870 miles) from Earth. This will be the farthest humans have ventured from Earth since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.

Spacewalks have traditionally been the domain of highly trained government astronauts, with roughly 270 conducted on the International Space Station (ISS) and 16 by Chinese astronauts on the Tiangong space station. Polaris Dawn represents a significant milestone in commercial space exploration.