SpaceX has made history again with Polaris Dawn. It has launched four civilians to the Van Allen radiation belt

Polaris Dawn has lifted off with four civilians on board on SpaceX’s most daring mission yet. The spacecraft is commanded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who financed the launch. He is accompanied by Scott Poteet, the pilot, and two SpaceX engineers: Anna Menon, the medical officer, and Sarah Gillis, a mission specialist.

No more delays. The Polaris Dawn crew had been in quarantine for more than two weeks. The launch had been delayed again and again by bad weather; not only in terms of liftoff, but also due to the unfavorable forecast for the landing of the ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

This time, Crew Dragon ‘Resilience’ will not go to the International Space Station, but will instead orbit the Earth freely for five days until re-entering the atmosphere and landing near the coast of Florida.

Just in time. This morning, SpaceX had to miss its first launch window with 40% favorable weather, but it finally found a slot to launch Polaris Dawn: 9:23 UTC on September 10, just before sunrise at Cape Canaveral.

Fortune has smiled on them. If Polaris Dawn had continued to be delayed in recent weeks, SpaceX would have had to clear pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center to prepare for the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper probe, a flight to Jupiter on a Falcon Heavy rocket.

Further than anyone else in half a century. A Falcon 9 rocket that already has four flights under its belt (it launched NASA’s Crew-8 mission and two Starlink missions) has put the Crew Dragon spacecraft and its four crew members into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 1,200 km.

At the end of the day, the spacecraft will use its engines to soar to 1,400 km (870 miles) – the farthest from Earth any human has gone since the Apollo missions more than half a century ago. And the farthest any manned mission on a commercial spacecraft has ever gone.

Exposed to the inner Van Allen belt. It will also be the first time that a manned commercial spacecraft has passed through the inner Van Allen radiation belt, one of two bands surrounding the Earth where highly energetic particles from the Sun are trapped by the Earth’s magnetic field.

The spacecraft will pass two or three times through a zone of high radiation known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, a deformation in Earth’s magnetic field that allows the Van Allen radiation belt to come closer to Earth’s surface than normal. Polaris Dawn’s crew will receive as much radiation in a few hours as astronauts on the space station receive in three months.

The scientific objectives of Polaris Dawn. Although funded by Jared Isaacman and SpaceX, Polaris Dawn has several scientific and technical objectives. First, to investigate the effects of radiation on astronaut health and the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s navigation and communication systems. Polaris Dawn will take advantage of the opportunity to have a mixed crew of men and women to study whether there are differences in the effects of flight for each sex.

The crew will also conduct 36 research studies and experiments at 31 different institutions aimed at improving human health on Earth and on long-duration spaceflight.

The technical objectives of Polaris Dawn. The crew are trying out SpaceX’s new pressurized spacesuits. And they plan to test them in a big way, with the first extravehicular activity in the history of a private company. The Dragon will depressurize at an altitude of 700 km and both Jared Isaacman and Anna Menon will peer into outer space through the hatch without ever leaving the ship.

The Dragon ‘Resilience’, which has already flown for NASA’s Crew-1 mission and the private Inspiration4 mission, also debuts laser communications with Starlink from space, so it will be able to transmit high-definition live video. Although it is possible that many of the images be reserved for a later documentaryas happened with Inspiration4.

Images | SpaceX

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