SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission blasts off for first civilian spacewalk

SpaceX has launched its Polaris Dawn mission to attempt the first ever civilian spacewalk, and one of the riskiest spacewalks ever attempted.

The four crew will now spend up to five days in orbit around Earth, with the spacewalk – or extravehicular activity (EVA) – of two members occurring on the third day. During that walk, the entire spacecraft will depressurise for around 2 hours. The two crew remaining inside the craft will also have to wear spacesuits.

This is a change from other modern spacewalks, which normally involve an airlock that seals the interior of the craft from the vacuum of space while astronauts exit. The Crew Dragon capsule being used in this mission has no airlock, making it similar to the early days of space flight in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, every previous spacewalk has been performed by government-trained astronauts, while the crew of Polaris Dawn are private civilians.

Adding to the risk is the fact that the spacesuits are a new design, although thoroughly tested on Earth, and that the flight will travel further from Earth than any human has been since the end of the Apollo programme in 1972.

Mission commander for the flight is Jared Isaacman, the head of SpaceX’s Polaris programme and its billionaire co-funder. The rest of the crew consist of retired US Air Force test pilot Scott Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.

The specific Crew Dragon capsule used in the flight is named Resilience, and the launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket was its third flight. The reusable Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth and landed on SpaceX’s drone ship Just Read The Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules are also used to ferry astronauts and supplies to and from the International Space Station, and one will be flying stranded NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams back to Earth in early 2025 following problems with the Boeing Starliner that launched them.