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SpaceX is gearing up for another groundbreaking moment in space exploration with the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission, heralding the dawn of a new era in commercial spaceflight. Spearheaded by Shift4 Payments founder Jared Isaacman, whose visionary leadership propelled the world’s first all-civilian Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the Polaris program aims to propel human spaceflight capabilities forward while championing noble causes on Earth.

Scheduled for a Summer 2024 launch, Polaris Dawn will be the inaugural voyage of the program, promising multiple historic firsts. Among them, the mission will witness the first-ever commercial astronaut spacewalk, as the crew ventures outside the Crew Dragon spacecraft to perform Extravehicular Activity (EVA) in the vacuum of space at approximately 700 kilometers (km) above Earth. The spacecraft will raise to an apogee of 1,400 km, which will be the furthest any human has ever been traveled to since NASA Apollo astronauts went to the Moon in 1972.

The crew members are: SpaceX Lead Space Operations Engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, along with retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott ‘Kidd’ Poteet. They will join Commander Isaacman in testing cutting-edge technologies aboard the Crew Dragon. This includes testing SpaceX’s new extravehicular activity spacesuits, designed to maximize flexibility and comfort for astronauts during both pressurized and unpressurized scenarios.

On “Star Wars” day, May 4th, SpaceX shared photographs of the new EVA suit on 𝕏, pictured below. The advancements in the EVA suit are not just confined to comfort and flexibility; they also boast enhanced reliability and redundancy features, ensuring the safety of the crew during their space voyages. “Developed with mobility in mind, SpaceX teams incorporated new materials, fabrication processes, and novel joint designs to provide greater flexibility to astronauts in pressurized scenarios while retaining comfort for unpressurized scenarios. The 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor to reduce glare during the EVA in addition to the new Heads-Up Display (HUD) and camera that provide information on the suit’s pressure, temperature, and relative humidity. The suit also incorporates enhancements for reliability and redundancy during a spacewalk, adding seals and pressure valves to help ensure the suit remains pressurized and the crew remains safe,” shared the company. “All of these enhancements to the EVA suit are part of a scalable design, allowing teams to produce and scale to different body types as SpaceX seeks to create greater accessibility to space for all of humanity.”

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“There was a lot of work on both the materials of the suit — developing a whole new layer that we needed to add for thermal management — as well as looking at the thermal condition for the crew members themselves, and making sure that they were at a comfortable temperature inside the suit,” said the SpaceX manager of spacesuit team Chris Drake during a public discussion on 𝕏-spaces.

Drake also shared that they used spacecraft components on the spacesuit. “[…] We have a lot of different resources at our disposal here,” he said. “There’s some thermal material that we ended up using on the boot, which was developed actually for Falcon and Dragon, and is used on the interstage on Falcon, and on the trunk of Dragon.”

During the discussion, Gillis outlined that the spacewalk, expected to last approximately two hours, involves procedures such as cabin depressurization and repressurization. Two astronauts will exit the capsule using a device called a “skywalker” at the front hatch, equipped with handholds and interfaces for assistance. The mission will include a series of tests to evaluate the performance of the EVA suits, focusing on mobility and movement in microgravity, among other factors. They also shared that the Crew Dragon spacecraft features modifications for the spacecraft, including a cabin repressuization system. “The interior is going to look a little different when you see pictures of us sitting in the spacecraft,” Gillis said.

SpaceX plans to use the suit for future missions to the Moon and Mars, so scalability to manufacture the spacesuit is important. “Building a base on the Moon and a city on Mars will require millions of spacesuits. The development of this suit and the execution of the spacewalk will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions as life becomes multiplanetary,” said the company.

Cosmic Chronicles had the opportunity to interview a scientist that will collaborate with Polaris Dawn crew to perform research, read more: The University of Malta partners with SpaceX Polaris Dawn Crew to conduct a Space Anemia research on upcoming mission

The SpaceX Extravehicular Activity (EVA) suit → https://t.co/z2Z9iVpt6x #Maythe4thBeWithYou pic.twitter.com/peETlLCcDP

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 4, 2024

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Featured Images Source: SpaceX