SpaceX has officially unveiled plans for its first commercial spacewalk, slated to occur later this year.
The Washington Post reported that Jared Isaacman, the billionaire entrepreneur who founded Shift4 and led Inspiration4, has launched a Polaris Program initiative that would feature “up to” three crewed SpaceX flights. The first of the flight missions, the Polaris Dawn, is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2022 and is set to include the first commercial spacewalk. Isaacman said that the aim is “to send a crew of four farther than any other human spaceflight in 50 years and feature the first private-citizen spacewalk.”
The second flight is expected to be aboard SpaceX’s Dragon, which NASA now uses to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station. The third flight of the series is slated to be the first crewed mission of the next-generation Starship spacecraft, currently in the works by SpaceX. NASA intends to use this particular spacecraft to land astronauts on the Moon.
Of course, the program hinges on SpaceX’s ability to have the necessary resources ready. This includes developing the right number of spacesuits ready for the spacewalk as well as testing to ensure uncertainty is minimized. The project is step forward in private spaceflight, an imminent potential for the future.
In other tech news, a new SpaceX animation shows off what its Starship launch could look like.
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