CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION — Four members of the Polaris Dawn crew held a briefing Monday about their upcoming mission and plans for the first commercial spacewalk — which they will undertake while wearing SpaceX’s new spacesuits.

Polaris Dawn Cmdr. Jared Isaacman, pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX lead space operations engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, kicked off the press conference in style by flying in on Polaris Ghost Squadron jets.

As their planes rolled in and they stepped out for the briefing, Isaacman exclaimed, “it’s hot,” as the Florida heat and humidity hit him.

Both he and Poteet are accomplished pilots with thousands of flight hours between the two of them. Besides Isaacman, the three members have never been to space before.

The press conference kicked off with Isaacman breaking down the different aspects of the mission with his three other crew members offering details.

“It’s been two-and-a-half years since we announced the Polaris Program and Polaris Dawn," he said. "It has been a really exciting journey of development and training."

The Polaris Program will see three Polaris Dawn missions, with this first one set for Monday, Aug. 26, at 3:38 a.m. ET.

The four will climb into a SpaceX Dragon capsule and have the company’s Falcon 9 rocket (booster B1083) launch them to conduct a series of technical and medical experiments for five days as they orbit the Earth before splashing down somewhere off the coast of Florida on the sixth.

The Polaris Dawn mission is being conducted in collaboration with SpaceX.  

Isaacman said one of the main purposes of the Polaris Program is to develop and test new technology to bolster SpaceX’s mission of furthering humans’ space exploration.

This is not Isaacman’s first time in space — as a philanthropist and CEO of Shift4, he was part of the first all-citizen Inspiration4 spaceflight in 2021.

One of the first objectives is seeing how the Dragon capsule will handle breaking an Earth-orbit altitude record.

Not counting the Apollo moon missions, the furthest humans have orbited the Earth was the Gemini 11 mission in 1966, when Dick Gordon and Pete Conrad reached an altitude of 853 miles (1,373 kilometers) above the Earth.

Polaris Dawn is aiming to reach 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) above the planet, said Isaacman, who added that they will not stay at that altitude for very long to lessen the risk of radiation exposure from the lower portions of the Van Allen Belt.

Menon, who is the medical officer and mission specialist for the mission, and Gillis, who will also be a mission specialist, will be the first women in history to reach such a high orbit.

The Dragon and the new spacesuit

This will be a Dragon capsule’s first time to be depressurized. The process of dropping the cabin pressure will will take 45 hours to prevent the crew from getting decompression sickness, explained Gillis.

This is all done in preparation for the first-commercial spacewalk that Isaacman and Gillis will do in the new SpaceX spacesuit, also known as an extravehicular activity (EVA).

Gillis said the EVA suit has greater mobility with a state-of-the-art helmet that comes with a heads-up display and camera. Both Isaacman and Gillis will be tethered to the Dragon while Menon and Poteet will be in their own suits but inside of the capsule.

“And I think it looks so cool and I … just feel so grateful to test out this piece of technology,” Gillis said of the first-generation SpaceX EVA suit.

The Dragon capsule for this mission, called Resilience, has been used in other crewed missions, such as Crew-1 and Inspiration4.

Another piece of technology to be tested during the mission is Starlink’s laser communications system.

Health and experiments

Menon touched on the science and health experiments of the mission, such as how astronauts who come back to Earth experience balance issues once they experience full gravity again.

She said the Polaris Dawn crew will wear a tool that will shoot a small amount of electricity into their ears to re-create that unbalanced feeling to better understand it.

Astronauts also experience vision problems when they return to Earth, so the crew members will wear a special contact lens on their eyes to measure the pressure on the eyeball over a period of time, she said.

The experiments they plan on doing will hopefully help future astronauts better deal with these health issues.

The Polaris Dawn mission, like Inspiration4, will raise funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, she said.

“This mission is testing technologies that contributes to our collective future in human-space exploration," Menon said. "But we also believe it is important to address the challenges we face here on Earth today, and one of the ways we are doing that is by raising funds and awareness for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital."

Inspiration4 raised more than $250 million for the hospital. 

Training for the mission

Poteet said members of the crew trained intensely on procedures, so they would be familiar with both the EVA and the Dragon. He said they trained physically and mentally as well, by doing things like sky diving, spinning in a centrifuge and climbing a volcano.

He compared his 20 years of being a jet fighter pilot — which included training for combat missions — to his time getting ready for Polaris Dawn.

“To put this in perspective: I flew fighters for 20 years and I accomplished about 1,500 hours in the simulator training for combat, and that’s over 20 years," he said. "And this is two-and-a-half years in the making and over 2,000 hours (in the Dragon simulator). This has been very extensive."

In a separate interview, Poteet talked with Spectrum News about some of the training and objectives for the mission.

During a question-and-answer session Monday, Spectrum News asked if any part of their training made them uneasy. Isaacman said there was one part of their training that at first was not a favorite for them.

“I’m not sure if everyone initially liked skydiving," he said. "But we got there."

Menon said the training gave them a toolbox of skills that will be used for the mission, with Gillis adding that the training helped them modify and update the mission specs, and the Dragon spacecraft itself.

Poteet said that spending all of the time in the Dragon simulator helped the crew build a confidence in working with the capsule.