SpaceX on Tuesday morning is planning to launch the Polaris Dawn with a four-member crew aboard a Dragon capsule that is planned to go the deepest into space with humans in 50 years. Photo courtesy SpaceX
SpaceX early Tuesday will attempt to launch the Polaris Dawn mission with four civilians who will travel the farthest into space humans have gone in more than 50 years.
The Falcon 9 rocket is set to launch at 3:38 a.m. EDT from Florida’s Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. There is a four-hour launch window, with additional launch times at 5:23 a.m. and 7:09 a.m. Advertisement
In Port Canaveral, there is a chance of showers and thunderstorms between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., then a chance of showers after 5 a.m., according to the National Weather Service.
The booster is scheduled to land on the drone ship named “A Shortfall of Gravitas” even as the National Hurricane Center is tracking two tropical disturbances in the Atlantic Ocean.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about 3.5 hours before liftoff.
If the launch doesn’t take place Tuesday morning, SpaceX said another four-hour window is available Wednesday with the same launch times.
Three previous Polaris Dawn launch dates have been scrubbed because of bad weather conditions at the launch site or where the booster will land in the Atlantic Ocean. Advertisement
The first delay was Aug. 28.
The Federal Aviation Administration also briefly grounded the company’s Falcon 9 after an uncrewed landing incident on a landing barge in the Atlantic.
The first commercial spacewalk in history is planned during the five-day mission. And the Dragon capsule will fly farther into space than any human has flown since the Apollo missions ended in 1972 with trips to the moon.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule is scheduled to go 870 miles above Earth in a trajectory that will take the crew through the treacherous inner regions of the planet’s Van Allen radiation belts.
Billionaire philanthropist Jared Isaacman will command the mission, which will be his second trip to space during which he’ll be joined by pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.
SpaceX, which is owned by another billionaire, Elon Musk, said the all-civilian crew is also expected to conduct 36 research studies and experiments on behalf of 31 partner companies that are “destined to advance both human health on Earth and during long-duration spaceflight.”
