These two dragons are preparing to spread their wings.
SpaceX recently unveiled the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will fly on the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 astronaut missions, scheduled to launch on August 26 and September 24, respectively.
“Double Dragon is currently preparing to fly for the Polaris Dawn and Crew 9 crewed spaceflight missions,” the company said. I wrote in X’s post A news story on Wednesday (August 21) showed photos of two capsules side-by-side at a processing facility on Florida’s Space Coast.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions for the Polaris program, funded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, which will send Isaacman, Scott Kidd-Poteet and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon on a five-day journey into Earth orbit.
Polaris Dawn will be the first-ever private spacewalk, taking the astronauts to 435 miles (700 kilometers) from Earth — farther than any crewed mission has gone since the Apollo era. Gillis and Menon will go deeper into space than any woman has ever gone before (all Apollo astronauts were male).
This mission will be Isaacman’s second, having previously led and funded the Inspiration 4 journey into Earth orbit in September 2021. Like Inspiration 4, Polaris Dawn will not be attached to the International Space Station (ISS) but will be a free flyer orbiting Earth on its own.
Related: Polaris Dawn Mission: Meet the Crew for First Commercial Spacewalk
Crew-9 will be the ninth long-duration astronaut mission that SpaceX will fly to the ISS for NASA. It is currently scheduled to send Alexander Gorbunov of Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson to the orbital laboratory.
But those plans could change: NASA is considering using Crew Dragon to return astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to Earth, who were aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on the first crewed test flight but suffered thruster problems en route to the ISS.
If NASA decides that returning Williams and Wilmore aboard Starliner is too risky, it will launch Crew 9 with just the two astronauts. That mission’s Crew Dragon will carry Williams, Wilmore, and the original two crew members early next year.
