Polaris Dawn crew launches Tuesday with plans for daring spacewalk outside SpaceX Dragon
After rainfall finally cleared from Cape Canaveral, the Polaris Dawn crew roared skyward aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 amid Tuesday's humid pre-dawn darkness, their rocket's tremendous orange flame slicing through spooky, low-lying layers of hazy clouds resembling fog and smoke.
"Wow!!! The Polaris Dawn crew is now in space!!! This is just the beginning of an incredibly exciting and important mission for the future of human spaceflight, and humanity," SpaceX webcast host Jessie Anderson tweeted after the 5:23 a.m. EDT launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
"These next few days are going to be fascinating," she said.
Anderson helped anchor SpaceX's extended 5?-hour night-owl webcast, which wrapped up shortly after the Polaris Dawn Dragon capsule successfully separated from the Falcon 9's upper stage. The 26?-foot-tall spacecraft previously propelled the Crew-1 and Inspiration4 astronauts into low-Earth orbit.
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This time, the Dragon carried Polaris Dawn mission commander and Shift4 founder and billionaire Jared Isaacman; pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew F-16 Fighting Falcons; and two SpaceX lead space operations engineers: mission specialist/medical officer Anna Menon and mission specialist Sarah Gillis.
First, SpaceX expected the Dragon to orbit Earth about eight times before climbing up to 1,400 km, or 870 miles, above the Earth's surface — the highest humans have traveled in Earth’s orbit since the completion of the Apollo program over 50 years ago.
Then, on Day 3 of the five-day mission, a daring spacewalk will expose all four crew members to the vacuum of space while wearing and testing SpaceX's newly designed spacesuits. This will represent the world's first commercial spacewalk.
In a science fiction-esque Tuesday tweet leading up to liftoff, SpaceX officials said the new spacesuits feature "a scalable design with the intent to create millions to help make life multiplanetary."
Weather presented a challenge up to liftoff
Polaris Dawn bucked meteorological odds: The Space Force's 45th Weather Squadron only forecasted 40% odds of favorable weather, citing thick cloud layers, cumulus clouds, flight through precipitation and ascent-corridor recovery weather.
Cloud cover and precipitation did prompt SpaceX to push back its original 3:38 a.m. launch target as rain showers were passing over pad 39A. SpaceX webcast host John Insprucker cited "dynamic conditions" as the key meteorological reason.
"The bigger problem is, there are frontal boundaries north and south of the launch site — and we were then seeing cells popping up. And that made us a little concerned that they may still be around at T-0, and we would then have had to scrub for the day," Insprucker told viewers about 3 a.m.
"So the good news is, we are still counting down for launch. We're going to wait two hours and change, and see how things go," Insprucker said.
After Tuesday's launch, the Falcon 9 first-stage booster landed aboard SpaceX's drone ship Just Read the Instructions hundreds of miles to the northeast in the Atlantic Ocean, completing its fourth mission.
Polaris Dawn marked the 63rd orbital launch of the year thus far from KSC and neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The last previous launch was SpaceX's Starlink 8-11 mission, which took flight Thursday morning.
The all-time annual record from Florida's Space Coast is 72 launches, which was just set last year.
For the latest news and launch schedule from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at [email protected]. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Polaris Dawn all-civilian crew launches Tuesday after 2 weeks of delay
