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Upping the stakes in the nascent private space-travel business, SpaceX unveiled a new spacesuit that will provide its upcoming Crew Dragon charter mission with the unprecedented ability to include a spacewalk.

The flight, slated to launch this summer, is the first of three technology demonstration missions developed and funded by entrepreneur-adventurer Jared Isaacman. The initiative, known as the Polaris Program, follows Isaacmans 2021 Inspiration4 mission, which marked SpaceXs first private charter and Isaacmans debut as a private astronaut.

The Polaris Program opens with a four-member crew launching onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon into an orbit reaching nearly 750 mi. above Earth. The capsule is then planned to boost itself into an 870-mi.-high orbit, the highest altitude for a crewed spaceflight since the final Apollo Moon mission in 1972. After seven orbits, during which sensors will collect data about the radiation environment, the Dragon is to descend to an orbit about 435 mi. above Earth for the first spacewalk by private astronauts.

Since SpaceXs Crew Dragon lacks an airlock, the entire capsule will be depressurized during extravehicular activity (EVA) operations, which are expected to last 2 hr.

Isaacman, 41, will be accompanied outside the capsule by crewmate and SpaceX employee Sarah Gillis. Others on the Polaris kickoff mission, known as Polaris Dawn, are SpaceX employee Anna Menon and Isaacmans longtime friend and colleague Scott Kidd Poteet, mission director for Inspiration4.

Depressurizing the Dragon will require all four crewmembers to don EVA suits. The suits, which have been in development at SpaceX for two years and were unveiled on May 4, are based on the pressure suits worn by Dragon crewmembers during launch and reentry. SpaceX so far has flown 13 crews into orbit, including nine missions for NASA, three private charters to the space station for Houston-based Axiom Space and Isaacmans Inspiration4 mission.

With mobility in mind, SpaceX teams incorporated new materials, fabrication processes and novel joint designs to provide greater flexibility to astronauts in pressurized scenarios while retaining comfort for unpressurized scenarios, SpaceX wrote on its website. The 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor to reduce glare during the EVA in addition to the new head-up display and camera that provide information on the suits pressure, temperature and relative humidity.

The suit also incorporates enhancements for reliability and redundancy during a spacewalk, adding seals and pressure valves to help ensure the suit remains pressurized and the crew remains safe, the company stated.

The EVA spacesuit features:

The suit fits like a glove, Poteet wrote on X. So comfortable its hard not to take micro-naps between sim sessions.

The Polaris Dawn crew will wear the EVA suits for launch and reentry as well. This suit is to be our first design of the EVA suit, SpaceX Vice President for Dragon Stuart Keech said in a May 4 presentation. Were going to continue through block upgrades as we go forward and learn.

The spacewalk will include a hands-free demonstration using a foot-mobility aid, Isaacman added.

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SpaceX Unveils Spacesuit For Private Astronaut Spacewalk - Aviation Week

SpaceX launches its 74th Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. This mission, combined with the preceding Falcon 9 launches and the nine Falcon Heavy flights, allowed SpaceX to surpass the total number of Space Shuttle launches from this pad. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Update 3:14 p.m. EDT: SpaceX landed the first stage booster, B1083, on the droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas.

With a Wednesday afternoon launch, SpaceXs Falcon family of rockets exceeded the total number of Space Shuttle missions from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center. The combination of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket launches passed the total number of shuttle flights seen at that pad.

They reached the milestone with the Starlink 6-56 mission, which launched on a Falcon 9 rocket at 2:42 p.m. EDT (1842 UTC), marking 83 orbital launches from SpaceXs KSC pad. Thats one more than the 82 shuttle launches that took place over the 30-year history of that program.

The SpaceX flights are a combination of 74 Falcon 9 launches and nine Falcon Heavy launches.

The first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1083 in the SpaceX fleet, launched for a third time. It previously launched the Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station as well as the Starlink 6-48 mission.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, the booster touched down on the SpaceX droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas. This marked the 68th booster landing for ASOG and the 305 first stage landing for SpaceX to date.

Following the booster landing, Jared Isaacman, the commander of the forthcoming Polaris Dawn mission, posted a couple of times on X (formerly known as Twitter) in reaction to mentions of the mission. The comments fueled speculation that B1083 will be the booster that supports the launch of Isaacman and his three crew mates inside of the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft.

During a Spaces event on X to talk about the Polaris Dawn mission, Stu Keech, the vice president of the Dragon program, noted that Crew Dragon Resilience was already in the Sunshine State, getting prepared for the launch. The mission will be highlighted by the operation of the first civilian spacewalk in history.

Its going through its prelaunch processing phase and the hardware is moving forward and on track for that early summer launch, Keech said.

Wednesday afternoons mission added another 23 Starlink satellites to the growing constellation. Prior to this launch, SpaceX has sent up 702 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit in 2024 over the course of 31 launches.

According to expert orbital tracker and astronomer Jonathan McDowell, as of May 6 there are currently 5,935 Starlink satellites on orbit out of a total of 6,350 that have been launched to date.

Roughly half a day after the Starlink 6-56 mission launch, SpaceX aimed to add another 20 satellites to LEO with the Starlink 8-2 mission, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. That mission, set to launch at 7:48 p.m. PDT (10:48 p.m. EDT, 0248 UTC), includes 13 Starlink satellites that feature the Direct to Cell capability.

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SpaceX breaks Space Shuttle pad record with Falcon 9 Starlink mission Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Elon Musk isn't convinced that aliens have ever visited Earth.

The SpaceX CEO and founder sat down for a panel titled "How to save the human race and other light topics" at the 2024 Milken Institute Global Conference held in Los Angeles on Tuesday (May 7). During the conversation, the institute's chairman, financier Michael Milken, began by asking Musk how he feels about the well-known opening monologue to many "Star Trek" series, in which it is stated that the starship Enterprise's mission is to "seek out new life forms and new civilizations." Musk replied, "Yeah, that's the idea."

Musk elaborated, stating that if we send probes out into the universe, we might find "remains of long-dead alien civilizations." He then launched into an explanation about why he doesn't feel aliens have ever visited our planet.

Related: SpaceX's Starship will go interstellar someday, Elon Musk says

Musk told Milken that he is frequently asked if he believes aliens are among us here on Earth, acknowledging how widespread that belief is. "And for some reason, a lot of the same people who think there are aliens among us don't think we went to the moon, which, I'm like: 'Think about that for a second,'" Musk said to laughter from the audience.

Musk elaborated on why he doesn't believe aliens have visited our planet, stating that, even with the thousands of broadband spacecraft that SpaceX operates in low Earth orbit, he hasn't once seen any compelling evidence of either extraterrestrial life or any potential craft operated by non-human intelligence.

"I've not seen any evidence of aliens," Musk said. "And SpaceX, with the Starlink constellation, has roughly 6,000 satellites, and not once have we had to maneuver around a UFO. [...] Never. So I'm like, okay, I don't see any evidence of aliens."

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

But, like many people, Musk said that he's open to considering the possibility of alien visitation, if indeed there is any compelling proof. "If somebody has evidence of aliens, you know, that's not just a fuzzy blob, then I'd love to see it, love to hear about it," Musk said. "But I don't think there is."

The SpaceX CEO then pointed out how concerning the lack of any evidence of alien civilizations is for the future of humanity, opining that, even if an ancient civilization managed to last a million years, it should have easily been able to explore and settle the entire Milky Way galaxy.

"So, they haven't, so why not?" Musk asked.

"I think the answer might be, probably, is that that civilization is precarious, and rare. And that we should really think of human civilization as being like a tiny candle in a vast darkness. And we should do everything possible to ensure that that candle does not go out."

Despite having never had to move out of the way of a UFO, Starlink satellites do, in fact, regularly make avoidance maneuvers to dodge debris or other spacecraft. Between June 1, 2023, and Nov. 30, 2023, Starlink satellites performed 24,410 collision avoidance maneuvers, equivalent to six maneuvers per spacecraft, according to data collected by SpaceX reported to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

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'I don't see any evidence of aliens.' SpaceX's Elon Musk says Starlink satellites have never dodged UFOs - Space.com

SpaceX's next private astronaut launch is slated for this summer, and a major component crucial to its success has finally been revealed.

The mission, Polaris Dawn, is poised to involve the first extravehicular activity (EVA) tasks to be performed by private astronauts, which means SpaceX needed to build its own spacesuit capable of protecting wearers from the harsh environment of space. Now, we've finally gotten our first look at the design.

The new suit was unveiled on SpaceX's website and social media channels Saturday (May 4). The announcement was accompanied that afternoon by a "spaces" discussion with SpaceX engineers and Polaris Dawn crew members on X, formerly Twitter, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk bought in 2022.

Related: Polaris Dawn crew prepares for world's 1st private spacewalk with SpaceX

SpaceX's EVA suit looks much like the company's IVA suit (intravehicular activity), which was designed to be worn within spacecraft during launches and landings, but not in the vacuum of space. The new EVA suits contain material enhancements and joint improvements aimed at increasing astronauts' mobility while also protecting them from the cold, airless void outside their spacecraft.

"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 crew members themselves, and making sure that they were at a comfortable temperature inside the suit," said the manager of SpaceX's spacesuit team Chris Trigg during the discussion on X.

The suits also incorporate technology used in other parts of SpaceX's manufacturing gamut. "We have a lot of different resources at our disposal here," Trigg said. "There's some thermal material that we ended up using on the boot, which was developed actually for Falcon and Dragon, and is used on the interstage on Falcon, and on the trunk of Dragon."

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Trigg also described a new heads-up display in the helmet design, allowing astronauts to view data about their suits' internal temperature, humidity and pressure; the display also exhibits a mission clock to monitor the durations of particular EVA tasks. "Aesthetically, it may look similar to the IVA, but what they did under the hood is extraordinary," said Jared Isaacman, mission commander for Polaris Dawn, during the discussion. In collaboration with SpaceX, Isaacman is also funding the mission.

The billionaire previously funded and commanded SpaceX's commercial Inspiration4 mission in 2021, which was the first all-civilian spaceflight. For Inspiration4, beyond in-flight research, Isaacman was motivated to charter the flight in an effort to raise money for pediatric cancer research center St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Polaris Dawn, the first of three possible missions for Isaacman's Polaris Program, is also raising money for St. Jude's, and aims take human spaceflight to a new level. "The Polaris program contemplates up to three missions," Isaacman said Saturday, "culminating with the first crewed flight of Starship."

Related: Meet the four private Polaris Dawn astronauts SpaceX will launch into orbit this year

Isaacman will be joined on Polaris Dawn by retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott "Kidd" Poteet, who will serve as the mission pilot, and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both lead operations engineers at SpaceX. The quartet hopes to push the boundaries of space travel with this flight, which will take them higher than any human has flown since the final Apollo moon landing mission more than 50 years ago.

Menon described the mission's flight profile and timeline during the May 4 discussion on X:

"We will be essentially launching into a highly elliptical orbit where our perigee is at about 190 kilometers, but our apogee is at about 1,200 kilometers. We will then, after a number of orbits, be raising our apogee up to about 1,400 kilometers The benefit of being at this high altitude is that we can better understand the impacts of that environment that higher radiation environment, for example on both the human body as well as on the spacecraft. After a number of orbits there, we will complete all the research that we were intending to do, and then we will lower our apogee back down to a nice coasting orbit around 700 kilometers, where we will complete the rest of our mission objectives including the spacewalk."

Polaris Dawn will last five days, during which time the crew plans to complete up to 40 experiments. For instance, the team intends to capture X-ray images of radiation in the Van Allen Belts ring-shaped zones of energetic charged particles around Earth investigate the mechanisms that cause motion sickness in space and test hardware, including the new EVA suit and the Crew Dragon capsule itself.

Because the original Crew Dragon design doesn't feature an airlock, the entire cabin must be depressurized in order for the crew to conduct EVA tasks. This has led to major modifications that allowed the capsule's interior to withstand the hard vacuum. SpaceX also added a nitrogen repressurization system for the conclusion of the mission's EVA duties. Further, hand rails and footholds were installed inside the spacecraft, and a ladder interface at the hatch's opening was implemented to facilitate astronaut egress.

Rather than fit each Polaris Dawn astronaut with an IVA flight suit as well as a new EVA suit, the crew will don SpaceX's EVA spacesuit for both launch and landing, as well as during the mission EVA.

"We'll vent the cabin down to vacuum and then we will undertake an EVA operation where we hope to learn an awful lot about our suits and the operation associated with it," Isaacman said, adding "It's the first commercial EVA. It's the first time you don't have government astronauts undertaking such a mission. And that's important because we are going to get to the moon or Mars someday. We're going to have to get out of our vehicles, out of the safety of a habitat and explore, and build and repair things.

"And that means the knowledge for spacewalks and EVAs has to go beyond just the the few that it exists with today."

Link:

SpaceX reveals new EVA suit for 1st private spacewalk on upcoming Polaris Dawn spaceflight (video) - Space.com

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER SpaceX successfully launched its Starlink 6-56 mission Wednesday afternoon.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Centers Launch Complex 39A, carryingmore than 20 Starlink satellites,stated SpaceX.SpaceX owns the Starlink company.

The window was originally set to open at 11 a.m. ET and was pushed back to 1:34 p.m. ET and then to 2:10 p.m. ET. No reason was given for the delays.

The 45th Weather Squadron gave a90% chance of good liftoff conditions, with the only concerns being the cumulus cloud rule.

This might also be the first launch for SpaceX today. It plans on launching the Starlink 8-2 mission fromVandenberg Space Force Base in California on Wednesday evening.

The Falcon 9's first-stage booster, B1083, for this mission is quite young. It only has two launches to its unique name.

After the stage separation, the first-stage rocket will land on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitasthat will be in the Atlantic Ocean.

The23satellites will head to low-Earth orbit, where the rest of them are parked.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Dr. Jonathan McDowell documents Starlink satellites.

Before this launch,McDowell recorded the following:

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SpaceX successfully launches its Starlink 6-56 mission - News 13 Orlando