One of the most adventurous manned space flights since Apollo could launch tonight

Early Tuesday morning, SpaceX will launch its 14th manned flight with its Dragon spacecraft – and this promises to be exciting.

This Polaris Dawn mission, led and funded by an entrepreneur and billionaire named Jared Isaacman, is scheduled to launch at 3:38 a.m. ET (07:38 UTC) on Tuesday from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This is only the second free-flying Crew Dragon mission SpaceX has conducted, and like the previous Inspiration4 mission, Polaris Dawn will again use a full crew of private astronauts. Although it is a private spaceflight, it is not really a space tourism mission. Rather, it is designed to advance space exploration. Isaacman has become one of the most serious figures in commercial spaceflight in recent years, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fly into space and push the boundaries of what private citizens can do in space.

“The idea is to develop and test new technologies and operations to advance SpaceX's bold vision of enabling humanity to travel to the stars,” Isaacman said last week during a press conference ahead of Tuesday's launch.

A new step forward

Isaacman, CEO of payments company Shift4, led the Inspiration4 mission in September 2021. It was unique because the crew consisted of himself – an experienced pilot – and three newcomers to spaceflight. Isaacman used the world's first all-civilian spaceflight on a private vehicle to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for charity and expand the circle of astronauts.

But while Inspiration4 seemed like a novelty, Polaris Dawn is pushing the boundaries of private spaceflight. Working closely with SpaceX, Isaacman has planned a five-day flight that will complete a number of important tasks after launch.

During the first hours of the spaceflight, the crew will attempt to fly in a highly elliptical orbit, reaching an altitude of up to 1,400 km (870 miles) above the planet's surface. This will be the highest Earth orbit ever flown by humans, and the farthest mission from Earth since the Apollo moon landings more than half a century ago. During this time, the crew will be exposed to a significant amount of radiation, and will collect biological data to assess the damage.

The Resilience The spacecraft will then descend into a more circular orbit about 700 km above the Earth's surface. Assuming launch is on Tuesday, the crew will don four spacesuits and open the hatch to the vacuum of space on Friday. Then Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis will each briefly step out of the spacecraft into space.

Isaacman's interest in conducting the first private spacewalk accelerated the development of these spacesuits at SpaceX by years. This is really just the first generation of the suit, and SpaceX will likely continue working on a spacesuit that has its own portable life support system (PLSS), which is the “backpack” of a conventional spacesuit that allows NASA astronauts to conduct spacewalks without being attached to the International Space Station.

The basic idea is that future generations of these less expensive spacesuits will enable exploration and settlement as the spacecraft makes the surface of the moon and eventually Mars accessible to more people. That journey begins, in a sense, with this mission's short spacewalks, with Isaacman and Gillis tethered to the Dragon vehicle for life support.

Laser and SpaceXers

Isaacman and his crew will also conduct a number of other research experiments, including an attempt to better understand a recently discovered but major problem in space habitability: spaceflight-related neuroocular syndrome. This will also be the first crewed mission to test Starlink-based laser communications in space.

And then there's the crew. Isaacman's close friend, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Scott “Kidd” Poteet, will be the mission's pilot, while Gillis and Anna Menon will serve as mission specialists. Both Gillis and Menon are SpaceX engineers who worked with Isaacman during Inspiration4. Now they will be the first SpaceX employees to ever go into orbit, bringing their experiences home to share with their colleagues.

This is the first of three Polaris missions Isaacman is scheduled to fly with SpaceX. The plan for the second Polaris mission, which will also be carried out on a Dragon spacecraft, has not yet been finalized, but lessons learned from that space flight may well involve using a second-generation spacesuit. The third flight, which is unlikely to take place before 2030, will be an orbital launch aboard the company's Starship spacecraft – making Isaacman and his crew the first to fly on that rocket.