The mission Polaris Dawn from SpaceX, a company owned by Elon Muskstarted in the best way and the astronauts achieved a historic milestone. Aboard the Crew Dragon ship, the crew reached an altitude of 1,400.7 kilometers above the Earthsurpassing the previous record, set by NASA in 1996.
After 15 days of various delays, finally the Polaris Dawn mission was able to take off successfully from the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday at 5:23 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Now, the next challenge is for billionaire Jared Isaacman to conduct the first private spacewalk in history.
SpaceX’s mission record
Musk’s company’s ship has on board the billionaire Jared Isaacmanaccompanied by the Former US Air Force pilot Scott Poteetand the SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. The mission took off early Tuesday morning, putting a crew of four civilian astronauts into orbit.
Hours into the journey, the crew made history. On board the Crew Dragon ship, the Polaris Dawn managed to reach the highest orbit around the Earth and surpass a record set during the early days of the POT.
The company confirmed that the spacecraft reached an altitude of 1,400.7 kilometers on Tuesday at approximately 10:19 a.m. Argentine time. The previous record was held by NASA, which, during its mission Gemini 11 reached 1,373 kilometers during its journey around the Earth.
While other NASA Apollo missions throughout history have traveled farther, they did not enter a traditional orbit around Earth, so they do not count toward this record. In addition, SpaceX’s mission is also the furthest a human has traveled since the last Apollo mission in 1972. In total, the astronauts will remain in space for five days.
When will the first private spacewalk in history take place?
After the first milestone achieved, the mission led by Isaacman will have a bigger challenge ahead. On Thursday morning, the team of Polaris Dawn will try to do the first commercial spacewalkwhen the crew orbits about 700 kilometers above the Earth.
The four crew members will be exposed to the vacuum of space when they Depressurize your Crew Dragon capsule and a hatch opens that separates them from the outside. After this, Gillis and Isaacman will come out of the spacecraft for about two hours.
This will be one of the major objectives of the SpaceX mission, as the spacecraft will be tested during the walk. New extravehicular activity suits (EVA) from Musk’s company. The spacesuits were built in just two and a half years, a record time for aerospace standards.
At this time, the Crew Dragon ship is already subjecting the space crew to a long process known as “preinspiration”. He himself seeks prepare physically to astronauts for their exposure to vacuum during spacewalk. In this way, each crew member Slowly purge nitrogen in your blood so that the gas doesn’t bubble up into your bloodstream as you changes the pressure inside the vehicle.
The objective of this process is to avoid the decompression sicknessThis is a dangerous and potentially fatal disease that divers also face when they try to surface too quickly.
After the historic walk comes the last challenge of the mission. The astronauts They will have to return to the shipclose the hatch, normalize the pressurization of the capsule and drive it safely to Earth.
Source: Ambito
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