SpaceX Reveals New EVA Suit for Upcoming Polaris Dawn Private Spaceflight (Video)

SpaceX’s next private astronaut launch is scheduled for this summer, and an important and crucial component to its success has finally been revealed.

The mission, Polaris Dawn, is set to involve the first extravehicular activity (EVA) tasks performed by private astronauts, meaning SpaceX needed to build its own spacesuit capable of protecting wearers from the harsh environment of space. Now we have finally been able to see the design for the first time.

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

Related: Polaris Dawn crew prepares for world’s first private spacewalk with SpaceX

Four humans in black jackets are sitting on high chairs in front of a glass wall. To his left, there is a white space suit propped up.

Polaris Dawn crew members Anna Menon, Scott “Kidd” Pottet, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis. (Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX’s EVA suit looks a lot like the company’s IVA (intravehicular activity) suit, which was designed to be worn inside spacecraft during launches and landings, but not in the vacuum of space. The new EVA suits contain material improvements and joint enhancements intended to increase astronauts’ mobility while protecting them from the cold, airless vacuum outside their spacecraft.

“There was a lot of work on both the materials of the suit (developing a completely new layer that we needed to add for thermal management) and looking at the thermal conditions of the crew members themselves and making sure they were at a comfortable temperature inside the suit” said SpaceX spacesuit team manager Chris Drake during the X discussion.

The suits also incorporate technology used in other parts of SpaceX’s manufacturing range. “We have a lot of different resources at our disposal here,” Drake said. “There is a thermal material that we ended up using in the trunk, which was actually developed for Falcon and Dragon, and is used in the interstage of Falcon and the trunk of Dragon.”

SpaceX’s extravehicular activity (EVA) suit → https://t.co/z2Z9iVpt6x #Maythe4thBeWithYou pic.twitter.com/peETlLCcDPMay 4, 2024

Drake also described a new head-up display in the helmet design, allowing astronauts to see data on their suits’ internal temperature, humidity and pressure; The screen also displays a mission clock to monitor the duration of particular EVA tasks. “Aesthetically, it may look similar to the IVA, but what they did under the hood is extraordinary,” Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn mission commander, said during the discussion. Isaacman is also funding the mission in collaboration with SpaceX.

The billionaire previously funded and commanded SpaceX’s Inspiration4 commercial mission in 2021, which was the first all-civilian spaceflight. For Inspiration4, beyond the in-flight research, Isaacman was motivated to charter the flight in an effort to raise funds for the 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 and aims to take human spaceflight to a new level. “The Polaris program calls for 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

A white capsule in space, above Earth. A person in a white spacesuit appears to be exiting the capsule.

Illustration of a Polaris Dawn crew member conducting the first private spacewalk. (Image credit: Polaris Program via X)

Isaacman will be joined on Polaris Dawn by retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who will serve as the mission’s pilot, and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both principal 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 since the last Apollo moon landing mission more than 50 years ago.

Menon described the flight profile and mission schedule during the May 4 discussion on X:

“Basically, we will launch into a very elliptical orbit where our perigee is about 190 kilometers, but our apogee is about 1,200 kilometers. Then, after several orbits, we will raise our apogee 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) both on the human body… and on the spacecraft that we will complete there after several orbits “All the research we intended. do, and then we will lower our apogee again to a nice inertial orbit of around 700 kilometers, where we will complete the rest of our mission objectives, including the spacewalk.”

On the left, a bust profile view of a white space suite facing right. On the right, in a thinner section of the image, that full spacesuit, looking to the left. The white is accented with dark gray sections, black boots and a copper gold visor.

The SpaceX EVA suit. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Polaris Dawn will last five days, during which time the crew plans to complete up to 40 experiments. For example, the team aims to capture X-ray images of radiation in the Van Allen belts (ring-shaped zones of energetic charged particles around the 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 does not feature an airlock, the entire cabin must be depressurized for the crew to perform EVA duties. This has led to important modifications that allowed the interior of the capsule to withstand the strong vacuum. SpaceX also added a nitrogen repressurization system for the conclusion of the mission’s EVA tasks. In addition, handrails and support points were installed inside the spacecraft, and a ladder interface was implemented at the hatch opening to facilitate the astronauts’ exit.

Instead of equipping each Polaris Dawn astronaut with an IVA flight suit and a new EVA suit, the crew will don SpaceX’s EVA spacesuit for both launch and landing, as well as during the EVA mission.

“We will vacuum the cabin and then undertake an EVA operation where we hope to learn a ton about our suits and the operation associated with them,” Isaacman said, adding: “It’s the first commercial EVA. It’s the first time we haven’t There are government astronauts undertaking such a mission. And that is important because one day we are going to get to the Moon or Mars. We will have to get out of our vehicles, outside the safety of a habitat and explore, build and repair things.

“And that means that the knowledge for spacewalks and EVAs has to go beyond the few that exist today.”

St John Shopon

Us News Update

SpaceX Reveals New EVA Suit for Upcoming Polaris Dawn Private Spaceflight (Video)