The launch of SpaceX’s four-person Polaris Dawn mission will be delayed by at least a day due to a helium leak in ground equipment at the Kennedy Space Center, the company said Tuesday, hours before the scheduled launch of the Crew Dragon capsule.
The highlight of the five-day mission is expected to occur two days after launch, when the crew will embark on a 20-minute spacewalk 700 kilometers above Earth. It will be the first private spacewalk in history.
The company now aims to launch the spacecraft, carried by a Falcon 9 booster, at 3:38 a.m. (07:38 GMT) on Wednesday, it said in a press release. post on X.
“Teams are investigating a ground-side helium leak,” it added in Tuesday’s message. “Falcon and Dragon remain healthy and the crew remains ready for their multi-day mission to low Earth orbit.”
Until now, only government astronauts have conducted spacewalks. The most recent discovery was by the residents of the International Space Station, who regularly wear spacesuits to perform maintenance and other checks on their space station.
The first American spacewalk took place in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, and followed a procedure similar to that for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was deflated, the hatch was opened, and an astronaut in a spacesuit stepped out on a rope.
The Polaris Dawn crew tests out SpaceX’s new, sleek spacesuits during the spacewalk.
Only two of the four — billionaire Jared Isaacman, pilot Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both senior engineers at the company — will leave the spacecraft.
Isaacman, the founder of the electronic payments company Shift4, funded the mission. He won’t say how much he spent, but it’s estimated at more than $100 million (about Rs. 839 crore).
© Thomson Reuters 2024
