A billionaire’s private space flight successfully launched into space

Private space flight Polaris Dawn successfully lifted off into space on Tuesday. The departure took place from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, at 12:24 Finnish time.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 carrier rocket took the ship into space. At the tip of the rocket is the astronaut capsule Crew Dragon, with four American astronauts on board.

Only one of them has been to space before. He is the financier of the flight, a billionaire Jared Isaacman.

The departure was postponed three times. The ship’s departure was also delayed on Tuesday due to weather conditions.

Polaris the flight is scheduled to take five days. On the third day, two astronauts will attempt a spacewalk, which has already aroused great interest.

Crew Dragon’s nose hatch is opened. Then the ship should fly at an altitude of about 700 kilometers above the Earth.

The walk is supposed to take about two hours. Astronauts Sarah Gillis and Jared Isaacman are floating for the first time in space very far from Earth. They are the first spacewalkers on a private space flight.

Four during the flight will also be farther from Earth than any astronaut craft in more than 50 years.

The furthest point of Crew Dragon’s orbit is 1,400 kilometers from Earth. The ship was told on Tuesday having already been this far. It is the furthest point in space ever visited by a female astronaut.

The last time a space pilot went as far from Earth was with the Apollo mission in December 1972. Apollo 17 flew all the way to the Moon. All the astronauts at the hearings were men. The moon is more than 380,000 kilometers away from Earth.

SpaceX and the flight control of the Polaris Dawn flight has not yet announced in more detail when the approximately two-hour walk will take place.

All four astronauts of Crew Dragon have to wear a spacesuit designed for cold space. This is because the ship does not have an airlock. Space is usually accessed through an airlock.

That’s why the approximately eight-meter-tall ship cools down drastically when the connecting hatch in its bow is opened for walking. The ship’s heat and oxygen escape into the void of space.

To the cold It is known that Isaacman, the flight commander, will be the first to float into space.

He is a rich tech entrepreneur who finances all the Polaris Dawn flights. Three of them are to be made.

SpaceX space engineer Sarah Gillis is floating into space after Isaacman.

Two other astronauts inside the capsule will also wear spacesuits in good time.

They are a space engineer at SpaceX Anna Menon and the pilot Scott Poteem who is a former US Air Force lieutenant colonel.

Size the operation, from opening the hatch to pressurizing the capsule again, takes a total of about two hours, Isaacman has said.

Out in space, Isaacman and Gillis hover for maybe a third of that time, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Spacewalkers Isaacman and Gillis are somehow constantly attached and in contact with the Crew Dragon ship. That’s why various grip points have been designed on its surface.

Since the spaceship cools down for a couple of hours, its interior is designed in case of cold.

“We’re not just going to float around,” Isaacman said.

Isaacman and Gillis also appear to perhaps be dancing as they test the dimensions of their new spacesuits.

With the help of movements, the astronauts gain experience in the new space suit. The residents are to be developed with the help of the available information.

The suits were also made by the space company SpaceX. The company plans to use the suits and their new versions for various missions in Earth orbit and maybe even on the surface of the Moon.

There are also almost 40 research tests in the flight instructions. Among other things, they study the effects of spaceflight on the human body.

This also provides valuable information about radiation high in space. Usually, space flights take place in a much lower orbit.

At high altitude, the pilot is exposed to the so-called Van Allen Zone for radiation.

In the zone there are electric particles with high energy. Their particles can interfere with the electronics of electrical devices.

During the flight, the astronauts will also test connections to the new Starlink internet satellites.

From the first one it’s been a long time since spacewalk.

A human glided into empty space for the first time on the Voshod 2 flight in March 1965. It was done by a Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov.

Leonov floated in space for about 12 minutes. The tethers kept him less than five meters from the spaceship.

Since then, more than 260 astronauts have walked, or rather floated, in space.

Dozens of astronauts and cosmonauts assembled the ISS space station on various shuttle flights between 1998 and 2011. There is one cosmonaut, Anatoly Soloyevdone work in space for more than 80 hours.

Correction September 10 at 14:45: Removed mention that no one has attempted a spacewalk this far from Earth. For example, NASA’s Apollo program spacewalkers did spacewalks much further away with hearings.