How to watch the Polaris Dawn astronauts attempt the first commercial space flight

Polaris Dawn’s two four-person astronauts could make history today by making the first commercial space flight about 700 kilometers (435 miles) above our planet. Jared Isaacman, mission leader and sponsor, and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis will leave the confines and safety of the Crew Dragon capsule for 15 and 20 minutes each. Two other crew members, Scott Poteet and Anna Menon, will stay inside the vehicle to monitor the astronauts’ condition and make sure everything is in order. SpaceX will broadcast the event live on its website and on X starting at 4:50AM Eastern time. In the event that space travel must be suspended, the astronauts will have another chance on September 13 at the same time.

As The New York Times he explains, the Crew Dragon doesn’t have an airlock like the International Space Station does, so the astronauts will have to let all the air out of the vehicle before opening one of its rockets. All four will have to wear the company’s extravehicular activity (EVA) suits, which are upgraded and tougher versions of its intravehicular activity (IVA) suits.

SpaceX’s EVAs come with new joints that can bend and rotate, thus providing greater mobility. Their helmets are equipped with a heads-up display (HUD) and a camera, and the space suits as a whole have a Faraday layer that can protect them from electrical fields. The Polaris Dawn crew’s spacewalk will test the suit as it experiences the harsh environment of outer space while conducting mobility tests. “The development of this suit and the implementation of space travel will be important steps towards the development of such spacesuits for future long-duration missions as life becomes more interplanetary,” reads the Polaris Dawn website. The entire mission, from start until the astronauts close the hatch to repressurize Crew Dragon, will last two hours.

The citizens’ campaign was launched on the morning of September 10 after many delays. In addition to accomplishing the first commercial space flight, the mission has other goals, including sending a crew farther than any previous Dragon mission and farther than anyone since the Apollo program, even reaching parts of the Van Allen radiation belt.