SpaceX's historic crewed Polaris Dawn mission launch date confirmed

Polaris Dawn is hoping to launch on August 26. The spacecraft will orbit the Earth at around 435 miles (700 kilometres), taking the crew farther from Earth than any mission since the Apollo era

SpaceX plans to launch the historic Polaris Dawn, the crewed private flight to Earth's orbit, on August 26. The Polaris Dawn team announced the news on August 7, sharing the post on X confirming the groundbreaking mission in mid-August.

The mission is expected to feature the first ever private spacewalk.

The official X account announced the date, sharing pictures of all four astronauts with a caption that reads, "We are targeting no earlier than August 26 for the launch of Polaris Dawn." 

We are targeting no earlier than August 26 for the launch of Polaris Dawn pic.twitter.com/tkkiRke64a

— Polaris (@PolarisProgram) August 7, 2024

 

This mission will send four people to Earth’s orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that will launch from Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The four crew members include pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet, former US Air Force lieutenant colonel; billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who will command the mission, and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both are SpaceX engineers. 

The four crew members will be lifted up to Earth orbit in Polaris Dawn in a free-flying mission that does not have any link with the International Space Station (ISS). 

Although it's already making history as the mission will attempt the first private spacewalk, apart from this, Polaris Dawn will circle our planet at an altitude of about 435 miles or 700 kilometres, which is the farthest crewed mission from earth since the Apollo era. 

Polaris Dawn was originally scheduled to launch in 2022. The target date has been pushed back multiple times, due in part to the ambitious mission's pioneering complexity.

SpaceX already has one such crewed mission, Crew-8, in orbit at the moment that sent four astronauts for a six-month mission to the ISS for Nasa this past March. The members of Crew-8 will return soon and Crew-9 astronauts will replace them as their launch is scheduled toward the orbiting lab on September 24. 

The Polaris program was announced in February 2022 by Jared Isaacman who also backed this mission financially. He also backed the first all-private astronaut mission, Inspiration4.