Cape Canaveral, Florida:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk today shared a stunning high-definition video of the Polaris space mission around Earth. Sharing the video highlights, Mr Musk said, “Looks like CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery), but it is real”.
According to the mission’s official website, the Polaris space programme is a “first-of-its-kind effort to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities, while continuing to raise funds and awareness for important causes on Earth.”
The Polaris space programme includes three human spaceflight missions that will demonstrate new technologies, conduct extensive research and ultimately culminate in the first flight of SpaceX’s Starship with humans on board.
Here is the video highlights of the Polaris mission that SpaceX and Elon Musk and shared:
Looks like CGI, but these are all real video highlights from the @PolarisProgram space mission
pic.twitter.com/CLCzhJndF5— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 27, 2024
MISSION I – POLARIS DAWN
The first of the three missions have already happened, while two others will happen “soon”, the mission website says, adding that ‘Mission I’ – named Polaris Dawn – sent a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low-Earth orbit from the launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The spaceship launched earlier this month – September 10. The crew on board completed all four mission objectives before returning to Earth on September 15.
THE OBJECTIVE
The Polaris Dawn mission tested the Falcon 9 and Dragon’s maximum performance, flying higher than any Dragon mission to date, reaching the highest Earth orbit ever flown with a peak apogee of 1,408.1 kilometers above Earth. Orbiting through portions of the Van Allen radiation belt, the Polaris Dawn crew conducted research with the aim of better understanding the effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health.
THE SPACEWALK
At altitudes ranging between approximately 190 and 740 kilometers above the Earth, the crew completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk. It was performed in SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity or EVA spacesuits, upgraded from the current intravehicular or IVA suit.
FUTURE MISSIONS
‘Mission II’, which is yet to be named, will build upon the first one and will continue to excel in areas of in-space communications while carrying out other research work.
The third mission – ‘Mission III’, which also doesn’t have a name yet, will be the first-human sapceflight on SpaceX’s Starship, which is the world’s first reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit. It aims to fly to the Moon and Mars, and someday, even beyond.
According to the mission website, the program are named after Polaris, a constellation of three stars more commonly known as the North Star, which has been a guiding light throughout human history to help us navigate the world and inspire progress.