SpaceX reschedules delayed Polaris Dawn launch, record commercial spacewalk

Four civilians launched on private spaceflight chartered by private company — Polaris DawnNASA’s space mission, which includes the first commercial spacewalk, is scheduled to launch early Wednesday morning after a 24-hour delay to resolve a helium leak in the launch pad’s umbilical cord system.

Billionaire flight commander Jared Isaacman, former F-16 pilot Scott Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, plan to lift off Wednesday at 3:38 a.m. EDT, beginning a 12-minute ascent into an elliptical orbit that will carry them higher than any astronauts have flown since the Apollo moon program.

The launch was originally scheduled for Monday, but the flight was delayed for 24 hours to complete normal pre-flight procedures. The flight was then delayed for another 24 hours after engineers discovered a leak in the launch pad’s umbilical cord that delivers helium to the booster to fuel the rocket’s engines.

SpaceX typically doesn’t provide details about such problems, but the company said Tuesday afternoon that the Falcon 9 rocket was on track to launch before dawn Wednesday, with meteorologists predicting an 85 percent chance of good weather along Florida’s Space Coast.

However, far from the launch site, the company was monitoring the weather along the Falcon 9’s northeast trajectory, where the rocket’s first stage will attempt to land on a drone ship off the coast after pushing the vehicle out of the lower atmosphere.

The flight is SpaceX’s second low-Earth orbit chartered by Isaacman, who at 16 founded what became one of the nation’s leading credit card processors. In 2021, he funded and led Inspiration Mission 4the first all-civilian commercial flight into orbit.

The Polaris Dawn mission, which launches Wednesday, is the first of three other flights funded by Isaacman in collaboration with company founder Elon Musk, and the first ever to feature spacewalks by non-government, civilian personnel.

Using a scaffold known as the Skywalker, Isaacman and Gillis will take turns climbing through the Crew Dragon’s forward hatch to reach open space early Friday, connected at all times by 12-foot tethers.

Because the spacecraft doesn’t have an air chamber, its cabin will be ventilated before the hatch opens. Poteet and Menon will also wear SpaceX-designed pressure suits, and while they won’t be able to stick their helmeted heads out of space, they will be counted among the world’s astronauts.

The primary goal of the demonstration is to test the new suit’s joints, mobility and comfort to help SpaceX engineers develop less expensive and easier-to-produce spacesuits for the large numbers of people SpaceX says will one day go to the moon and Mars.

The crew also plans to test a high-speed laser communications system, and will conduct a range of biomedical experiments throughout the five-day flight to help researchers from more than 30 institutions learn more about the effects of weightlessness.

Astronauts in the Polaris Dawn spacecraft are expected to land off the coast of Florida on Labor Day.