The Polaris Program

[Yazata]

Jared Isaacman is the guy who hired a Crew Dragon last year for the first all private civilian orbital spaceflight. Well, he isn't done with spaceflight yet.

For the last few days he has been buzzing Starbase in Boca Chica in his personal jet fighters. So people suspected that something was up with Isaacman. Then at the Starship presentation Elon said that SpaceX has inked some cool contracts, but didn't want to steal anyone's thunder by prematurely revealing them.

Photo by Jack Beyer of nasaspaceflight.com

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Well today, one of those shoes dropped. It was the announcement of Jared Isaacman's Polaris Program. He proposes to hire three spaceflights from SpaceX. The first two will be Crew Dragon flights, and the third will be a crewed Starship flight.

https://polarisprogram.com/

https://polarisprogram.com/dawn/

The first Crew Dragon flight is penciled in for Q4 this year. It will feature four astronauts, who have already been chosen. (Two men, one of whom is Jared himself, and two women). They are being fully trained and these flights won't be stunts.

One of the biggest scientific objectives is to put the Crew Dragon in a highly eliptical orbit that carries it up into the Van Allen belt, to measure radiation and its biological effects on crew. The engineering objective is to completely depressurize the capsule in flight, open a hatch and conduct the first all-private spacewalk. This will feature use of a new SpaceX EVA (extravehicular activity) suit, which is modified from the existing black and white pressure suits. Artemis has been having trouble producing its own government Moon-suits, so Elon said earlier that he'd produce the necessary suits for them if they wanted. They didnt take him up on it, but it seems that his remark wasn't just sarcasm, SpaceX was really developing their own EVA suits for their own use. The spacewalk will also require modifications to the Crew Dragon life support to enable depressurization and repressurization. So there will be some major engineering developments.

https://polarisprogram.com/science-research/

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Another bit of news is the revelation that SpaceX has started their own astronaut corps of company astronauts. Everyone expected it to happen and here it is. Some of the Polaris astronauts will be SpaceX employees.

The second Polaris mission will be another Crew Dragon flight, perhaps for next year sometime. Its scientific/engineering objective are still undecided.

The third Polaris flight is the real headliner, the first Starship crewed mission. Unclear when it will happen. This is big news since it indicates that work is proceeding behind the scenes on crewed Starships, including internal layout, life support and so on. We kind of knew it from the HLS contract, but again here it is.

Interview with Jared and the pilot for the first Crew Dragon mission, conducted at SpaceX Hawthorne.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8IVogVkx-G0

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Here's Jared Isaacman and his wife up at the very top of the OLIT tower, overlooking the fully stacked Starship. He proposes to be in the crew of the first of those to fly humans into orbit.

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Premiere of the new film Top Gun - Mauricio

Here's Mauricio from RGV Aerial Photography, the guy who does those flyover photographs and videos of Starbase, in one of Jared Isaacman's jets. (Everyone likes Mauricio) Mauricio and Jared had been in communication and it developed into an invitation to go flying with Jared and his airshow display pilots. Mauricio is a student pilot himself, but Jared handled the jet and Mauricio handled the camera. (Mauricio's aviation experience is in small Cessnas, not jets flying airshow maneuvers. But he didn't drop the camera. Yay, Mauricio!)

So here's Mauricio doing his best Tom Cruise

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/BZGmrP8VbqA

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The Polaris-Dawn mission has apparently slipped from Q4 2022 to no earlier than March 2023. That's not surprising, since it will feature the first all private spacewalk, using new SpaceX EVA suits that are still in development. They note that human activities on the Moon and Mars will require thousands of suits, which SpaceX is striving to design in practical, affordable and scaleable fashion.

The Polaris-Dawn crew are already in training in Hawthorne and various places

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NASA has a teleconference for today (Thursday) at 4:30 PM EDT/1:30 PM PDT. Eric Berger reports that insiders tell him that it's going to be "big".

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1...2061474816

Eric Berger has obtained a list of participants and says "Ok, some big clues here" about what will be announced:

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1...5922125825

1. Dr. Z (Thomas Zurbuchen) the NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate

2. Kathy Lueders the NASA Associate Administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate

3. Jessica Jenson - SpaceX VP for Customer Operations and Integration

4. Jared Isaacman - commercial astronaut and Polaris Dawn commander

5. Patrick Crouse - Hubble Space Telescope Project Manager 

Looking at these five people and it's pretty clear what will be announced: Jared Isaacman appears to be putting together a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to go up and service Hubble, which is otherwise approaching the end of its life!

[Yazata]

The Polaris-Dawn mission has apparently slipped from Q4 2022 to no earlier than March 2023. That's not surprising, since it will feature the first all private spacewalk, using new SpaceX EVA suits that are still in development. They note that human activities on the Moon and Mars will require thousands of suits, which SpaceX is striving to design in practical, affordable and scaleable fashion.

The Polaris-Dawn crew are already in training in Hawthorne and various places

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They are already more than a year behind the schedule above, largely because of delays with the SpaceX EVA suits. There are other hurdles too, such as depressurizing and repressurizing a crew Dragon capsule in space to serve as its own airlock. But they are working through it step by step.

Jared says

"Things are heating up w/Polaris Dawn mission. We spent last week completing most of the EVA suit acceptance test procedure. This was the first time we wore the final assembled suits as opposed to the development or training suits. There are big milestones ahead (CEIT, vacuum chamber runs, joint sim campaign), but we are getting very close to ?"

https://twitter.com/rookisaacman/status/...0455824767

[Yazata]

SpaceX has completed the new Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon capsule. It now moves on to vacuum chamber testing and a variety of other tests. This Crew Dragon is a heavily modified version since it will need to depressurize internally down to vacuum, open its forward hatch in space to allow space walkers to emerge, then repressurize back to 1 atm once they are back inside and the hatch is closed. This capsule is effectively its own airlock.

Since it's a custom capsule for Jared, I wonder if he owns it or if SpaceX does. I assume they plan to use it for Polaris-2, the privately funded Hubble servicing mission, if NASA approves it.

Here's the SpaceX workers who built it in Hawthorne, with Jared and his 4 person crew in the front center, and the custom crew dragon in the center rear, behind the crowd.

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