We’ll all have to wait a little longer to see the first-ever private space flight.
SpaceX is now targeting mid- to late August to launch Polaris Dawn, a mission funded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. The next flight, using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket, was scheduled to launch no later than July 31.
SpaceX announced the launch delay today (July 26), during a press conference focused on NASA’s upcoming Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station. The company said Crew-9 will launch no earlier than Aug. 18, while Polaris Dawn will launch sometime after that.
“There’s a lot going on on the International Space Station right now,” SpaceX Dragon mission director Sarah Walker said during today’s press conference. “We’ve chosen to launch Crew-9 as our first flight.” [astronaut] “We are ready to launch the Polaris Dawn spacecraft in late summer, once these commitments are met.”
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Later in the press conference, Walker clarified that “late summer” meant next month: “Right now, we’re still planning to launch Polaris Dawn in August.”
Related: How SpaceX astronauts aboard the private Polaris Dawn spacecraft will attempt the first-ever “all-civilian” spacewalk
Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions in Polaris Programwhich will be funded and led by Isaacman. He did the same for SpaceX’s flagship program. Inspiration4 The mission carried Isaacman and three crewmates into orbit around Earth in September 2021.
The Polaris Dawn crew consists of Isaacman; pilot Scott “Kid” Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel; and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both SpaceX engineers.
Like Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn will be a free-flying spacecraft, flying around Earth on its own rather than tethered to the International Space Station. But the upcoming mission will fly higher than its predecessor and will include at least one spacewalk — the first private activity outside a spacecraft ever.
This is not the first delay for the Polaris Dawn mission; it was originally scheduled to launch in late 2022, but the complex and ambitious mission has been postponed several times.
Today’s press conference comes just 15 days after a rare accident involving a Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket’s upper stage failed to complete a planned orbit-raising burn during a July 11 launch, resulting in the loss of its payload — 20 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites.
The immediate cause was a liquid oxygen leak. SpaceX traced the issue to a crack in a pressure sensor line in the upper stage’s liquid oxygen system, and has taken steps to ensure the problem doesn’t recur. In fact, the Falcon 9 is scheduled to return to service early Saturday morning (July 27), with another Starlink launch.
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