The firm is preparing for the Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which will culminate in the long-awaited return of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in February. Wilmore and Williams hitched a ride to the ISS on Boeing’s Starliner in June and have remained there as engineers contended with several issues on the spacecraft.

Crew-9 will be the first human spaceflight to launch from Space Launch Complex-40. Initially scheduled to fly in August, the mission was pushed back to give NASA and Boeing more time to analyze and eventually undock Starliner, freeing up space for Dragon to dock.

The flight is NASA’s ninth Commercial Crew mission with SpaceX, the agency’s sole active contractor for that program. Boeing, the other contract recipient, is still developing Starliner but hopes to fly an inaugural astronaut rotation mission late next year. The program seeks to maintain a continuous human presence on the ISS, which in 2025 will enter its 24th consecutive year of occupation.

Crew-9 was originally slated to be a four-person mission. But only NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will fly up to the space station, meaning Dragon will launch with a pair of empty seats. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were taken off the flight to make way for Williams and Wilmore but are eligible for reassignment.

Hague was chosen due to his experience. Gorbunov, who has never flown to space, remains on the manifest because NASA is required to send a Roscosmos cosmonaut on the mission.

After liftoff, Dragon will accelerate to 17,500 mph before docking autonomously with the space station. Upon arrival, they will join the crew of ISS Expedition 72, which includes Wilmore, Williams, NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.

Over the course of about five months, the crew will perform station maintenance via spacewalk and conduct more than 200 scientific research experiments, intended to prepare humans for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit as well as solve problems back on Earth. Among other things, they will study the physics of supernova explosions, the behavior of cells and platelets during long-duration spaceflight, and methods to reduce changes to astronaut brain and ocular structure due to low gravity.

NASA will provide live streaming coverage of the Crew-9 prelaunch, launch, postlaunch, and docking on NASA+ and the agency’s website, starting Friday afternoon. It will also maintain a live video feed of the launchpad in the hours leading up to liftoff and provide blog updates. Spaceflight enthusiasts can register to attend the launch virtually.

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The post What to Watch: SpaceX Crew-9 Scheduled for Saturday Launch appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The mission to return the spacecraft to Earth concludes a flight test to the International Space Station (ISS) that was unexpectedly extended to three months after Starliner experienced helium leaks and thruster malfunctions on June 6. 

The two astronauts aboard the Starliner—Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams—have since been staying on the ISS alongside the Expedition 71 crew. After weeks of in-space and ground testing, technical interchange meetings, and agency reviews, NASA announced in August that Wilmore and Williams would be returning via the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft next February.

• READ MORE: A Brief History of Astronauts Stuck in Space

A news release from NASA on Friday stated that its Commercial Crew Program requires a spacecraft to fly a crewed test flight to prove the system is ready for regular flights to and from the orbiting laboratory. The goal of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the ISS and low Earth orbit.

Following Starliner’s return, the agency will review all mission-related data.

Ken Bowersox, the associate administrator for the space operations mission directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in the release that he was proud of his team’s work during the flight test and Starliner’s safe return.

“I am extremely proud of the work our collective team put into this entire flight test, and we are pleased to see Starliner’s safe return,” Bowersox said. “Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible. NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station.”

The flight on June 5 was the first time astronauts launched aboard the Starliner. It was the third orbital flight of the spacecraft, and its second return from the orbiting laboratory. The spacecraft will now ship to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for inspection and processing.

“We are excited to have Starliner home safely,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in the release. “This was an important test flight for NASA in setting us up for future missions on the Starliner system. There was a lot of valuable learning that will enable our long-term success. I want to commend the entire team for their hard work and dedication over the past three months.”

Bringing Starliner Home

As scheduled, Starliner departed from the ISS at 6:04 p.m. EDT Friday evening. 

The spacecraft’s 59-second deorbit burn went off without a hitch just over five hours later at 11:17 p.m. EDT. Despite initial concerns around the mutch-scrutinized aft-facing thrusters, telemetry visualization on NASA’s broadcast showed they appeared to fire as needed.

The service module separated and performed its disposal burn, and Starliner was then set to reenter the atmosphere and touch down around midnight. 

Live video taken from the ISS and two NASA chase planes showed the craft streaking through the atmosphere for a little under an hour before the ship touched down at White Sands Space Harbor at 12:01 a.m. EDT. Landing and recovery teams followed NASA’s previously published mission timeline plans, and the spacecraft was then on its way to Kennedy Space Center.

Following the mission, NASA hosted a live post-landing press conference to answer questions from journalists. Officials answering questions were Joel Mantalbano, deputy associate administrator for the space operations mission directorate at NASA Headquarters; Steve Stich, Commercial Crew Program manager at NASA Kennedy; and Dana Wiegel, International Space Station manager at NASA Johnson.

Stich said during the conference that Starliner executed a nominal breakout sequence.

“[It’s] the first time we’ve used that to back away from the station,” Stich said. “We backed out to about five meters and then did a series of about 12 burns using the service module 4 jets. After that sequence of maneuvers, we ended up opening at about 22 kilometers per rev away from the space station. All those thrusters did really well through that SEP [Solar Electric Propulsion] sequence, no problems at all. [There were] no fail-offs or any problems at all.”

He further stated that all eight of the Starliner’s forward thrusters and the two aft thrusters worked well during a hot fire.

“We had great performance from the GNC system, the guidance navigation control [and] the Vesta system,” Stich said. “Last fight on OFT2, we had a little bit of trouble with what we call a ‘calibration maneuver’ to really make sure that the attitude is good for this space integrated GPS INS system, and that went really well. We had a deorbit burn that executed on time at 11:17 p.m. central. It was about 130 meters per second, a 58 second burn. It was a really good burn and the service module thrusters performed well for that burn [and] the OMAX performed well.”

During the deorbit burn, Stich stated that the team noticed temperatures being a little higher in the top and starboard “dog houses.” He said that one of the thrusters—S2A2—didn’t fail off but had a little higher temperature than expected.

Stich said that Starliner performed great during entry, but one of the 12 thrusters—an upfiring thruster—did not perform at all during a hot fire before entry. He also said that the SIGI-3 navigation system failed off temporarily during landing. The SIGI-2 also had a couple of hiccups during entry that Stich said his team would be looking into.

What’s Next for NASA and Boeing?

Despite the change in mission plans over the last several months, Mantalbano said he would not describe this test flight as a mission failure.

“I would not call it a successful failure,” Mantalbano said. “We knew going in this was going to be a test mission. We learned a lot. The teams worked together, both the Boeing and the NASA team to understand the systems of the spacecraft and how they operated. The team worked together at White Sands to understand the analysis that was done. On the test mission, things don’t always go as you planned. And so we were prepared. The fact that this vehicle is home, we’re very happy to have the vehicle home. To me, [this was] a success. Clearly we [have] some work to do. The teams will understand that work and move forward.”

When asked if the next flight would be fully certified or another test flight, Stich said that it was too early to say.

“I think we wanna take the steps to go look at all the data,” Stich said. “Certainly our goal is to get to the rotation flight. Our goal all along has been to have one flight a year, one flight from Boeing Starliner, and another flight from SpaceX with Dragon. It’ll take a little time to determine the path forward. But today we saw the vehicle perform really well. We’ve got some things we know we’ve got to go work on, and we’ll go do that and fix those things, and then go fly when we’re ready.”

Stich said that one of the first things NASA will do when the Starliner is taken back to Kennedy Space Center will be analyzing the tracking data relay satellite to the ground from the recorded data onboard.

“With the test flight, we have a number of sensors across the systems that record data,” Stich said. “We’ll want to downlink all that high rate data and take a look at that data. And then it’s a series of analyzing all the data from the entry, the undocking and the deorbit across all the systems on the vehicle to just see if there’s anything that was off nominal. We’ll study the data at a little higher rate. So it will take a couple of weeks to get it back and a week or so to get the data off the spacecraft.

Several journalists present at NASA’s press conference asked why Boeing wasn’t in attendance to answer questions. Mantalbano answered that Boeing deferred to NASA because it represents the mission.

“I will tell you that Boeing has critical work that they do for NASA in the International Space Station Program, the Commercial Crew Program, and the Space Launch Systems Program,” Mantalbano said. “Their work is critical to our success, and we fully expect Boeing to continue all three of those programs.”

When asked again if the relationship between NASA and Boeing had been damaged, Mantalbano reaffirmed his previous statement.

“And I think from a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it,” Stich said. “We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni on board. I think there’s, depending on who you are on the team, different emotions associated with that. And I think it’s going to take a little time to work through that. For me, a little bit, and then for everybody else on the Boeing and NASA team.”

The post Boeing Starliner Returns Home Safely appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

But theirs is not the first mission to be unexpectedly lengthened or hit by unforeseen circumstances.

What Happened to Boeing Starliner?

Launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, Starliner’s Crew Flight Test (CFT) sought to evaluate the capabilities of the Boeing-built craft before NASA certifies it for regular International Space Station (ISS) astronaut rotation missions. It was scheduled to spend eight days at the ISS then return Wilmore and Williams to a parachute-aided homecoming in the western United States.

But shortly after liftoff, Starliner suffered multiple helium leaks and reaction control system thruster failures. With several thrusters critically sited on its disposable service module (which will burn up at mission’s end), NASA and Boeing repeatedly extended the flight to perform more tests and gather more data.

Days turned to weeks and weeks became months as testing and data-gathering took place in space and on Earth. The astronauts assessed Starliner’s habitability and functionality. The helium leaks slowly stabilized. And at White Sands in New Mexico, a Starliner thruster was rigorously test-fired to assess its performance and understand possible causes of the thruster failures in orbit. 

But it was not enough.

On August 24, NASA opted to return Starliner to Earth empty and keep the astronauts on the ISS until February. In a press conference, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said that “the bottom line” was that “there was just too much uncertainty” in how the thrusters would behave. Wilmore and Williams’ homebound ride will instead be SpaceX’s four-seat Dragon Freedom, scheduled to launch on September 24 with two crew members and a pair of empty seats. It is scheduled to return to Earth—with Wilmore and Williams aboard—in February 2025.

Space Ride-Swapping

Over the decades, it has become a common practice for crew to return to Earth in a different spacecraft than the one that took them to space.  

The first instance came in January 1969 when, in a bid to grab some of the spotlight from the U.S. Moon-orbiting Apollo 8 weeks earlier, the Soviet Union achieved the first docking of two spacecraft. Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov piloted Soyuz 4 to rendezvous with Soyuz 5’s Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev, and Yevgeni Khrunov. After the two craft docked, Yeliseyev and Khrunov spacewalked over to Soyuz 4 and returned to Earth with Shatalov while Volynov landed alone.

From 1978, cosmonauts routinely swapped Soyuz capsules as visiting crews to the space stations Salyut 6, Salyut 7, and Mir left fresh ships for use by long-duration resident crews, then returned home in older ships approaching the end of their operational lifetimes. 

And after 1995, Soyuz cosmonauts began launching or landing on space shuttles and shuttle astronauts via Soyuz. Norm Thagard became the first American to launch and land in different ships—riding a Soyuz to Mir, then landing on space shuttle Atlantis. Between 1997 and 2009, several flyers launched to space on one member of NASA’s shuttle fleet and returned on another.

Stranded by the Shuttle

But missions lengthened by unforeseen factors are rarer. 

A notable character at the August 24 Starliner announcement was Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations. A former astronaut who flew four shuttle missions and commanded the ISS, he knows a thing or two about getting stranded far from home. 

On February 1, 2003, Bowersox was midway through a four-month stint aboard the ISS at the helm of Expedition 6, partnered with Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and NASA astronaut Don Pettit. The crew planned to return home in mid-March aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. Days earlier, they made a ship-to-ship call with space shuttle Columbia, flying the STS-107 microgravity research mission. 

As the ISS flew over Ukraine and Columbia soared high above Brazil, Bowersox and STS-107 commander Rick Husband exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes. 

“Glad to see you guys made it into orbit,” said Bowersox. 

“We’re really excited to be able to talk to you guys,” replied Husband. “One big space lab to another big old space lab on that beautiful station of yours.” 

But Columbia would disintegrate during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing her entire crew, grounding the shuttle fleet and stalling construction of the half-built ISS.

“My first reaction was pure shock,” Bowersox said 11 days later. “I was numb and it was hard to believe what we were experiencing was really happening.” 

Mission Control adjusted Expedition 6’s schedule, furnishing the crew some time for reflection.

“When you’re up here for this long, you can’t just bottle up your emotions and focus all of the time,” said Bowersox. “Each of us had a chance to shed some tears.”  

With shuttles indefinitely grounded, getting Bowersox’s crew home proved problematic. An unoccupied ISS was hardly ideal but without regular shuttle visits normal operations were untenable. Two-person caretaker crews on six-month tours would keep the station functional until the shuttle returned to flight. 

The first such crew arrived in April and Expedition 6 came home on May 6—making Bowersox and Pettit the first Americans to launch on a U.S. shuttle and land in a Russian Soyuz. At 161 days, their tragedy-tinged voyage ran 30 percent longer than planned.

Other Extended Stays

Bowersox and Pettit weren’t the first to experience a significant hike in their mission’s duration.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, tanks rumbled into Moscow’s streets and Russia’s tricolor flag replaced the hammer and sickle fluttering over the Kremlin. And two cosmonauts were acutely aware of their once-proud nation’s crumbling future.

One of them, Sergei Krikalev, launched to Mir in May and was due home in October. But with the Baikonur launch base located in Kazakhstan, Russia feared the newly independent Kazakh government might nationalize or refuse access to it.

To placate them, a Kazakh guest cosmonaut was hastily added to the October Soyuz mission, forcing Krikalev to pull a double-length Mir mission of 10 months.

Sergei Krikalev departed Earth a citizen of the Soviet Union and returned to the Russian Federation.

In 1996, NASA’s Shannon Lucid saw her own four-month Mir stay protracted to six months due to shuttle launch delays. Her mission grew from 140 to 188 days, the longest ever flown by a woman. But Lucid also missed her son’s 21st birthday—illustrating spaceflight’s unpredictable impact on families.  

Other missions were also lengthened. Notably, in 1998 and 1999 Russian cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev spent 379 days on Mir—twice his original flight length. And throughout the ISS era, mission failures, changing circumstances and launch delays kept multiple crews in space far longer than intended. 

In 2017, a reduced number of Russian cosmonauts on the ISS led NASA to extend astronaut Peggy Whitson’s six-month stay to 9.5 months, a new record for women. And Christina Koch, launched for a six-month stay in early 2019, relinquished her Soyuz return seat that fall to a visiting astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. Koch returned to Earth in early 2020 after 11 months—another record for women.

More recently, in 2021 and 2022 the six-month mission of Mark Vande Hei and Pyotr Dubrov was doubled to 355 days. Vande Hei later remarked that taking care of his mental health proved critically important in getting through the flight.

And across 2022 and 2023, the half-year stay of Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio doubled to 371 days—the first year-plus human space mission of the 21st century. Their lengthy ISS stint arose when a coolant leak rendered their Soyuz capsule unsafe to return to Earth, requiring a replacement ship to be launched to bring them home.

‘Extraordinary Sacrifices’

“Our astronauts,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, “make extraordinary sacrifices away from their homes and loved ones to further discovery.” His rousing words are fittingly apt for Wilmore and Williams as their week-long flight morphs to eight months: the biggest duration hike of any crewed mission in history—a staggering 25 times longer than planned on their day of launch.  

Despite immense sacrifices on their families, there can be no doubting Wilmore and Williams’ steely resolve. Having both flown the shuttle and Soyuz, their Starliner launch and Dragon landing jointly will make them the first humans to launch or land in four different spacecraft types. And theirs will sit in the top 20 longest missions ever flown—adding to a corpus of knowledge that someday will get humans to Mars. 

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on Astronomy.

The post A Brief History of Astronauts Stuck in Space appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

This comes after a weeklong mission to the ISS extended into an eight-month nightmare for two astronauts after the Starliner experienced thruster malfunctions during the trip to space. Since their blastoff on June 5, NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams have been staying on the ISS alongside the Expedition 71 crew.

• READ MORE: NASA Explains Strange Noises Heard on Boeing Starliner

NASA announced in August that the crew would be returning via the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in February. They won’t be the first astronauts returning to Earth in a separate spacecraft than the one they launched from, though missions extended from unforeseen factors are rare. 

Returning the Starliner

NASA’s mission timeline posted on Thursday states that safety and mission success remains top priorities for teams during the Starliner’s return.

As the first American capsule designed to touch down on land, the Starliner will use potential landing locations in the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; Willcox, Arizona; and Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. NASA said that Edwards Air Force Base in California is also available as a contingency landing site.

NASA said it analyzes weather predictions for the various landing sites, taking note of winds, ground temperatures, cloud ceiling height, visibility, precipitation, and nearby storms. When the teams start undocking, the Starliner will complete several departure burns. From there, the spacecraft is planned to reach its landing site in as little as six hours.

During this deorbit burn, a final weather check will commence.

• READ MORE: SpaceX—Not Boeing—Will Return Starliner Astronauts After Monthslong Mission

“Winds must be at or below 10 mph (9 knots),” NASA’s mission timeline said. “If winds exceed these limits, teams will waive the deorbit burn, and Starliner will target another landing attempt between 24 and 31 hours later.”

Assuming weather meets acceptable conditions, Starliner will execute its deorbit burn for approximately 60 seconds. This will slow it down enough to reenter earth’s atmosphere and land at its target site. Immediately after the deorbit burn, the spacecraft will reposition for service module disposal, which will burn up during reentry over the southern Pacific Ocean.

Reentry will see the capsule reach temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which may interrupt communications with the spacecraft for approximately four minutes. After this, the forward heat shield on top of the aircraft will be jettisoned and several parachutes will be deployed at 30,000 feet.

• READ MORE: NASA: Starliner Astronauts May Not Return Until February

As the aircraft continues to slow down, the base heat shield will jettison at 3,000 feet and cause six landing bags to inflate. The spacecraft will travel at approximately 4 mph at touchdown.

Recovery After Landing

After touchdown, several NASA and Boeing landing recovery teams stationed near Starliner’s landing site will move toward the spacecraft in sequential order:

• The gold team will use equipment to “sniff” the capsule for any hypergolic fuels that didn’t fully burn off before re-entry. They also cover the spacecraft’s thrusters.

• The silver team will then electrically ground and stabilize the Starliner.
• The green team will supply power and cooling to the crew module since the spacecraft will be powered down.
• The blue team will then document the recovery for public dissemination and future process review.
• The red team, which includes Boeing fire rescue, emergency medical technicians, and human factors engineers, then will open the Starliner hatch.

The teams will begin unloading time-critical cargo from the Starliner. The spacecraft will then be moved to Boeing facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for refurbishment.

The post NASA Reveals Mission Timeline for Crewless Starliner Return appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The spacecraft is scheduled to autonomously undock from the ISS no earlier than Friday, making way for a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA’s two-person Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission. Wilmore and Williams will hitch a ride home on that Dragon, rather than Starliner, after NASA determined the beleaguered Boeing spacecraft poses too much risk to return with crew as planned.

The space agency on Monday said the strange sounds have ceased and will have “no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station.”

According to a conversation picked up by a Michigan-based meteorologist and first reported by Ars Technica, Wilmore on Saturday radioed NASA mission control at Johnson Space Center in Houston to report the odd sound.

“Got a question about Starliner,” he said. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker…I don’t know what’s making it.”

The astronaut asked mission control to listen in and see if it could determine the source of the noise. Moments later, Houston called back and Wilmore, now inside Starliner, held his microphone up to the spacecraft’s speakers, picking up the unusual sound.

“All right, Butch, that one came through,” mission control said. “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.”

The operator confirmed with Wilmore that there were no “other weird noises” coming from Starliner.

“I’ll do it one more time and let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore replied, capturing the sound again. “Call us if you figure it out.”

Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who flew two space shuttle missions and served a stint as ISS commander, had an ominous response to the noise in a post on X.

“There are several noises I’d prefer not to hear inside my spaceship, including this one that @Boeing Starliner is now making,” Hadfield said.

NASA, though, offered a more mundane explanation for the pulsing sound.

“The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner,” the space agency said. “The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback. The crew is asked to contact mission control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system.”

This wouldn’t be the first time astronauts have encountered unusual noises in space. In 1969, for example, Apollo 10 astronauts reported hearing strange whistling “music” as they circled the moon. Apollo 11 pilot Michael Collins said he heard a similar “woo-woo sound” during his mission, which engineers have chalked up to radio interference.

More recently, Yang Liwei, the first Chinese man to reach space in 2003, recalled hearing what sounded like “someone knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer.” Scientists now believe it was the result of air pressure changes.

It appears the noise heard aboard Starliner likewise has a rational explanation. Regardless, Wilmore and Williams will not need to concern themselves with it, as they are set to ride SpaceX’s Dragon back to Earth. The astronauts will return in February, eight months after they arrived at the space station.

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The post NASA Explains Strange Noises Heard on Boeing Starliner appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

SpaceX on Saturday unveiled its first-generation extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit, which will be donned by astronauts aboard the Polaris Dawn mission, scheduled for no earlier than this summer. Polaris Dawn—a five-day, four-person orbital mission to research human health both in space and on Earth—is the first of three potential human spaceflights under the Polaris Program.

SpaceX and entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who founded the program in February 2022, held a discussion accompanying the announcement on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk acquired in October..

While the mission has no firm launch date, SpaceX on Saturday confirmed that Polaris Dawn would be the next crewed mission the company will fly.

What Is Polaris?

The Polaris Program is the brainchild of Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of integrated payments provider Shift4 who is also a pilot and astronaut, with more than 7,000 flight hours and multiple experimental and ex-military aircraft ratings. Isaacman in 2012 founded Draken International, a private air force that trains pilots for the U.S. Armed Forces.

Isaacman purchased flights from SpaceX in February 2022 to launch the program and is funding Polaris Dawn himself.

Named after the constellation of three stars more commonly known as the North Star, or Polaris, the program comprises three potential missions, one for each star. The effort aims to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities with an eye toward future missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond. Simultaneously, it will raise funds and advance research into issues facing humanity on Earth, such as cancer.

Polaris Dawn, the first of the three missions, was announced in 2022 and expected to fly later that year. It has since been delayed multiple times, most recently from February to mid-2024, due in part to SpaceX’s development of the specially designed EVA spacesuits.

Polaris Dawn and a second mission without a timeline, simply called Mission II, will be flown using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule. Both vehicles are already in use by NASA and a handful of commercial customers, such as Axiom Space.

Falcon 9, a reusable two-stage rocket, is the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket and has been lauded for driving down launch costs in flying 330 times. Crew Dragon, which is capable of carrying up to seven passengers, in 2020 restored NASA’s ability to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) with the first Commercial Crew rotation mission. It has flown a total of 46 missions, visiting the ISS on 42.

Polaris is expected to culminate in a third mission comprising the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Like Falcon 9, the spacecraft is designed to be fully reusable and has so far attempted three orbital test flights, each more successful than the last.

Isaacman has been outspoken about Polaris’ aim to make human spaceflight accessible to all. The new SpaceX suits, for example, are designed to fit a range of body types and accommodate all spacewalkers.

At the same time, the billionaire aviator is focused on solving problems on Earth. Since its founding, Polaris has worked closely with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and helped fund research into childhood cancer.

Civilians in Space

Polaris Dawn is notable for its four-person crew, which includes the first SpaceX employees expected to actually reach space.

Mission specialist Sarah Gillis oversees the company’s astronaut training program, while mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon manages crew operations. Gillis, trained to be a classical violinist, joined SpaceX in 2015, while Menon is a seven-year NASA veteran. But both have been part of past Crew Dragon flights. Menon in particular was influential in developing Dragon’s crew and emergency response capabilities.

Joining the SpaceX employees will be pilot Scott Poteet, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel with more than 3,200 flying hours in the F-16, A-4, T-38, T-37, T-3, and Alpha Jet.

Isaacman himself will serve as Polaris Dawn mission commander, a role he also filled for  SpaceX’s 2021 Inspiration4 mission: the first all-civilian mission to space. Poteet, who previously served in roles at Isaacson’s companies Shift4 and Draken, was mission director for that flight, which raised $250 million for St. Jude.

To prepare for Polaris Dawn, crewmembers lived inside the decompression chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for two days, summited the 16,800-foot peak of Illinizas Norte volcano in Ecuador, and experienced 9 Gs of force while training on three different kinds of fighter jets.

The mission will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will spend up to five days in orbit, performing about 40 experiments and testing of hardware and software. Like Inspiration4, it is a charitable effort, with the goal of raising additional funds for St. Jude.

“Fifty or 100 years from now, people are going to be jumping in their rockets, and you’re going to have families bouncing around on the moon with their kids at a lunar base,” said Isaacman in an article on the St. Jude website. “If we can accomplish all of that, we sure as heck better tackle childhood cancer along the way.”

Polaris Dawn aims to fly higher than any SpaceX Dragon mission to date, a height that hasn’t been reached since the end of the Apollo program half a century ago.

The crew will also attempt to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown. Isaacman during the discussion on X said the mission will target an apogee of 1,400 kilometers, or about 870 miles, more than double the orbital height reached by Apollo 17. That orbit would place the crew just inside the Van Allen radiation belt, where it hopes to research effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health.

“The benefit of being at this high altitude is that we can better understand the impacts of that environment…on both the human body…as well as on the spacecraft,” said Menon during the discussion on X.

Suit Up

The Dragon capsule will complete seven elliptical orbits until reaching its apogee before descending to a circular orbit at about 700 kilometers (435 miles). At that altitude, crewmembers will attempt the first commercial spacewalk. It would also be the first time four astronauts have been exposed to the vacuum of space at the same time, according to SpaceX.

The spacewalk will mark the first use of SpaceX’s EVA spacesuit in low-Earth orbit, a key milestone that is expected to inform future iterations of the design for long-duration missions.

It’s an evolution of SpaceX’s Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit that has been modified to enable both intra and extravehicular use. In other words, personnel won’t need to change clothes when moving from the confines of the spacecraft to the harsh environment of space.

The EVA suit adds greater mobility, seals and pressure valves, a helmet camera, and textile-based thermal material, which regulates suit temperature and can be controlled using a dial. Boots were constructed from the same thermal material used to shield Falcon and Dragon from exposure.

“There was a lot of work on both the materials of the suit, developing a whole new layer that we needed to add for thermal management as well as looking at the thermal condition for the crewmembers themselves, and making sure that they were at a comfortable temperature inside the suit,” said Chris Drake, manager of SpaceX’s spacesuit team, on Saturday.

The 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor designed to reduce glare as well as a state-of-the-art, heads-up display (HUD). The HUD is active only during spacewalks and displays spacesuit pressure, temperature, and humidity, as well as a mission clock to track how long the astronauts are exposed to the vacuum of space.

Already, SpaceX is developing a second-generation EVA suit for missions to the moon and Mars. It estimates that millions of suits will be required to one day build a lunar base or Martian city.

“This is important because we are going to get to the moon and Mars one day, and we’re going to have to get out of our vehicles and out of the safety of the habitat to explore and build and repair things,” Isaacman said during the discussion on X.

The Dragon capsule has also required modifications to prepare for the landmark spacewalk. SpaceX on Saturday said a structure called “Skywalker” has been attached near the capsule’s hatch to act as a mobility aid. Handrails and foot rails have been installed inside the spacecraft, with a ladder interface added to the hatch opening.

SpaceX also installed a cabin pressurization system that allows the interior of the capsule to withstand the vacuum of space as air is sucked out during the spacewalk. A repressurization system will stabilize it once the astronauts return.

Why It Matters

In addition to achieving the first commercial spacewalk and the highest orbital altitude ever recorded, Polaris Dawn hopes to test Starlink laser-based communications in space for the first time. Data from the test could help develop space communications for future missions.

In addition, Polaris and SpaceX selected 38 scientific experiments from 23 partner institutions—including NASA, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University—intended to advance the understanding of human health in space and on Earth.

The crew will use ultrasound to study decompression sickness, for example, and will research spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome: a disease unique to humans who fly in space that can have severe debilitating effects. Upon landing, astronauts will undergo tests to study anemia—an unavoidable effect of traveling to space—and other conditions that might impact humans on Earth.

The scientific aims of the Polaris Program differ from the commercial spaceflight ventures offered by companies such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which could be classified more aptly as space tourism operations.

Tickets for those companies’ orbital and suborbital offerings, some of which involve research, can range from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to the millions. Isaacman and SpaceX’s Inspiration4, meanwhile, raised a quarter of a billion dollars for cancer research.

Isaacman has been particularly outspoken when it comes to accessibility in spaceflight. And by taking on much of the risk himself, the billionaire businessman has lessened the pressure on SpaceX. Isaacman’s funding of Polaris Dawn has allowed the company to focus on developing the spacesuits and other technology necessary to ensure the mission runs smoothly.

Polaris Dawn also represents a critical juncture for SpaceX’s Starship, the lynchpin of the company’s planned human spaceflight offerings. The largest rocket ever built is not quite ready to fly humans. But when it is, the third Polaris mission is expected to be its maiden voyage.

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The problem with the relief valve on the upper stage of the Atlas rocket was detected about two hours before the scheduled 10:34 p.m. EDT launch from Cape Canaveral.

“In a situation like this, if we see any data signature is not something that we have seen before, then we are just simply not willing to take any chances with what is our most precious payload,” United Launch Alliance spokesman Dillon Rice told reporters.

ULA is providing the rocket to boost the capsule into orbit for a rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS).

* READ MORE: What to Know About Boeing Starliner’s First Crewed Test Flight 

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had just strapped in when the decision to scrub was made. It’s not known how long it will take to fix the valve.

It’s the latest in a series of issues encountered getting the Starliner to space, although this is the first issue with the launch system. The first uncrewed test launch of the capsule in 2019 failed to get to the right orbit for the ISS. The second test reached the space station, but after it returned problems were found with the parachutes and flammable tape was discovered in the electrical system.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

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The spacecraft’s return marks the commercial space company’s 30th cargo resupply mission of the orbital outpost for the space agency.

Suspended under four deployed parachutes, the capsule landed in the Atlantic Ocean at 1:38 a.m. EST off the coast of Tampa, NASA said.

• READ MORE: NASA SpaceX Crew-8 Mission Successfully Launches After Delays

“Once Dragon has been retrieved by SpaceX’s recovery team, the critical science aboard the spacecraft will be transported via helicopter to [NASA’s Kennedy Space Center] and provided to researchers,”  SpaceX said in an update following the splashdown.

Later this week, the three NASA astronauts and a Roscosmos cosmonaut who comprise SpaceX Crew-8 currently aboard ISS are set to move a Dragon crew spacecraft capsule in order to make way for new crewmembers who could arrive at the space station as soon as next week. 

• READ MORE: NASA Astronauts Detail Daily Life, Firsts Aboard International Space Station

On Thursday, Crew-8 is set to move the Dragon crew spacecraft that is currently docked at the forward port of ISS’s Harmony module to its zenith port, NASA said. The undocking and redocking is expected to take less than an hour.

“That will clear the forward port of Harmony for the arrival of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard on the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission,” NASA said.

• READ MORE: NASA Is Asking for Help to Return Samples That Could Uncover Life on Mars

Launch of the Boeing Crew Flight Test is planned for 10:34 p.m. Monday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It is expected to reach the ISS shortly before 1 a.m. EST May 8.

In preparation for the arrival of @NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, four crew members will relocate the @SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the space-facing port of the Harmony module on Thursday, May 2.

Live coverage of the relocation will begin at 7:30am ET. https://t.co/JmNvsHSYGu

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) April 29, 2024

The post SpaceX’s Uncrewed Dragon Spacecraft Splashes Down With Cargo appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission, which concluded in September, sent NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi on a 186-day trip to the International Space Station, where they rendezvoused with NASA astronaut Frank Rubio. But it was anything but a vacation.

“I used to joke about the fact that a lot of times in our videos, when we show what’s going on, we spend about a third of our time showing the fun stuff,” Bowen told FLYING at a media event at NASA Headquarters alongside his three crewmembers. “Work is way more than a third of the time we spend up there.”

The mission included several firsts. Rubio, for example, set the U.S. record for most consecutive days in space by the end of his 355-day stay, which was extended six months after the capsule that brought him to the space station was damaged. AlNeyadi became the first Arab to complete a spacewalk.

But the astronauts also conducted more than 200 experiments during their stay at the orbital lab—many of which could address pressing needs on Earth and far, far beyond.

To the Space Station and Back

Crew-6 began with the launch of a SpaceX Dragon Endeavor capsule, strapped to a Falcon 9 rocket, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Bowen, Hoburg, AlNeyadi, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev were its occupants. Rubio had launched previously aboard a Soyuz MS-22.

Bowen, a veteran of multiple trips to the space station, was right at home. But for Rubio, Hoburg, and AlNeyadi, Crew-6 was their first time in space.

“Learning to fly for the first couple days is pretty difficult,” Rubio said.

For AlNeyadi, adjusting to the lack of spatial awareness was the biggest challenge

“Everything is very quick aboard the space station…We have 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day,” AlNeyadi told FLYING.

Bowen said the orbital lab has come a long way since his first visit in 2008. He was part of several assembly missions, which doubled the space station’s occupancy from three to six, installed technology such as a water recycling system, and delivered research and stowage modules. Crews also replaced the laboratory’s batteries several times.

“We were part of that first step of really making the space station functional,” Bowen told FLYING. “We did a lot of things with just three people on board. But as soon as we got up to six people, the ability to do the actual science—the business of the space station—exploded.”

The astronauts spent the next six months growing plants, researching tissue chips for heart, brain, and cartilage tissue, and conducting hundreds of other experiments for ISS Expedition 69. NASA expeditions refer to the crew occupying the space station—Rubio, Bowen, Hoburg, and AlNeyadi were the 69th such team.

After finishing their work, the astronauts began reentry, splashing down on September 4 after 186 days.

“Becoming a plasma meteorite when you’re coming home is pretty exciting stuff,” said Rubio.

But the research and experiments the crew performed are expected to have an impact long after the mission’s conclusion.

Charting the Future

Despite Rubio’s excitement, launch and reentry may have been the dullest segment of the mission—the crew had more than 200 experiments to fill their time.

“The work is continuous; the work is ongoing,” said Bowen. “Maintaining the space station, like you maintain your house, takes a big chunk of your time. The amount of science we can do now is incredible. Every day we were up there, there’s four of us in the [U.S. Orbital Segment] working.”

Just days after the astronauts’ arrival, they received a cargo vehicle full of materials for experiments. Crewmembers worked throughout the day, sometimes together and sometimes individually, coming together at dinnertime to debrief.

“We are testing hundreds of technologies, and many of them are becoming spinoffs for humanity when utilized here on Earth,” AlNeyadi told FLYING.

For example, astronauts studied how they could grow plants such as tomatoes in harsh and unforgiving environments, either on Earth or in space. They also applied experimental medications to heart cells and printed biological material such as knee cartilage, using technology that could one day print organs for patients on the blue planet.

The crew even ran competitions with university students. Competing teams were able to program a flying robot and control its flight on the space station from Earth.

Perhaps the most consequential research involved a water recycling system, which allowed the astronauts to drink their own urine for the majority of their stay (move over, Bear Grylls). The system may sound outlandish, but it could hold real benefits for humanity.

“Imagine taking the same technology and providing it to people in need in remote areas where they lack water,” said AlNeyadi.

The experiments will also play a key role in NASA’s Artemis program: a series of missions intended to return Americans to the moon for the first time in half a century. According to the crew, learning to live and work in space will be essential for those journeys. Artemis II will send astronauts into lunar orbit in 2025, while Artemis III will attempt to land them on the moon’s surface the following year.

“Knowing that you’re affecting the future of humanity and inspiring future generations, that’s super important to us,” said Rubio.

As important as their work was, the astronauts would not have been able to complete it without finding ways to blow off a little steam.

One method was to simply go outside. Each crew member got the opportunity to complete a spacewalk, including AlNeyadi, who became the first Arab to accomplish the feat.

“Getting in the suit, going outside, and doing important repairs on the station while seeing those views of Earth was just very special,” said Hoburg.

The crew had to get creative at times—Bowen baked pies for Pi Day, and Rubio cut the other astronauts’ hair. But they found plenty of ways to exercise and have fun—and by the end of the mission, they had become a family.

“What a great group of people I had to hang out with for six months,” said Bowen. “It was just incredible.”

A Collective Effort

Crew-6 included the first astronaut of Salvadoran heritage to reach space (Rubio) and the first Arab to complete an extravehicular activity (AlNeyadi). Those feats are symptoms of a broader trend: the globalization of space exploration.

At one point during Expedition 69, there were 11 astronauts aboard the orbital laboratory, which is designed for a maximum of seven. Occupants hailed from the U.S., UAE, Russia, Denmark, and Japan.

“It’s a very intense period when you’re handing over to a new crew, because you’re basically teaching them a whole new lifestyle in a few weeks,” said Rubio.

But the transition was also a welcome development, according to Bowen.

“We actually get a chance to meet a lot of our colleagues around the world before we ever fly,” he said. “So having that crew come on board, I knew every one of them. It was a lot of fun. It’s just great to have new people on board—and it’s another sign you’re going home too.”

AlNeyadi said the UAE already has benefited greatly from its activities in the final frontier. The country’s space agency has only been around for two decades. But in that short time, it has sent a satellite, Martian probe, and the nation’s first astronaut, Hazza Al Mansouri, into space.

“That was an eye opener for everybody. After that, everybody—every young student in the school—wanted to be an astronaut,” said AlNeyadi, who was appointed UAE minister of youth this month.

The Emirati’s own trip has had an impact too. For example, he said it helped catalyze the UAE’s participation in NASA’s Lunar Gateway project, which aims to build a space station orbiting the moon. The country is the fifth to join the partnership.

NASA is also increasingly relying on private industry to help fill certain gaps for Artemis, a contrast to the government-heavy Apollo program. Rubio said he helped certify all SpaceX launch and recovery assets before his mission, a reflection of the agency’s tight relationship with it, Blue Origin, and other commercial partners.

The hope is that greater collaboration can kick off a groundbreaking new era for space travel, one in which humans are continuously occupying the final frontier.

Bowen shared a story about a pair of glasses he found floating aboard the space station, which he mistook for his own. They weren’t Rubio’s or Hoburg’s either, and AlNeyadi didn’t wear glasses. As the crew soon realized, they belonged to an astronaut who had stayed at the orbital lab years ago: a relic of humanity’s persistent effort to uncover the mysteries of space.

Crew-7 astronauts—picking up where Crew-6 left off—splashed down earlier this month, a few days after the Crew-8 team arrived. Perhaps they too will discover the remnants of explorations past. Undoubtedly, they will build on the foundations of previous missions and push humanity forward.

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Shortly before 6 a.m. EDT Tuesday, the crew splashed down in a SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, nearly 19 hours after it autonomously undocked from the ISS. The astronauts were retrieved by the company’s recovery vessels, NASA said.

• READ MORE: NASA Crew-7 Astronauts Arrive at International Space Station

The Crew-7 mission launched August 26 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On board were astronauts from four different countries and three continents: NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos’ Konstantin Borisov.

“After more than six months aboard the International Space Station, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 has safely returned home,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “This international crew showed that space unites us all. It’s clear that we can do more—we can learn more—when we work together. The science experiments conducted during their time in space will help prepare for NASA’s bold missions at the moon, Mars, and beyond, all while benefiting humanity here on Earth.”

• READ MORE: Ax-3 Commercial Astronauts Splash Down after 18 Days Aboard ISS

Following its liftoff, the crew traveled 84,434,094 miles during the mission, spent 197 days aboard the space station, and completed 3,184 orbits of Earth, according to NASA.

Crew-7’s return marks the latest milestone for NASA’s commercial crew program and comes a week after the successful SpaceX launch of three NASA astronauts and a Roscosmos cosmonaut to ISS as a crew rotation.

• READ MORE: NASA SpaceX Crew-8 Mission Successfully Launches After Delays

The Dragon spacecraft, which has supported two other ISS crew rotations, will be returned to Florida for inspection and refurbishment at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to ready it for its next flight, NASA said.

Splashdown of Dragon confirmed – welcome back to Earth, @AstroJaws, @Astro_Andreas, @Astro_Satoshi, and Kostya! pic.twitter.com/iugZ6Awwvn

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 12, 2024

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