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Record-setting Polaris Dawn crew aims for early Sunday splashdown in Gulf of Mexico
The Polaris Dawn crew closed out a record-setting commercial spaceflight and packed up Saturday for re-entry and a pre-dawn splashdown early Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico northwest of Key West, Florida.
Flying along a southwest-to-northeast trajectory, the Crew Dragon capsule, carrying billionaire Jared Isaacman, pilot Scott Poteet and company engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, is expected to fire its braking rockets at 2:40 a.m. EDT Sunday to drop out of orbit.
Plunging back into the discernible atmosphere, the Crew Dragon’s protective heat shield will endure temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit before the ship slows enough to deploy its parachutes. Splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico near Dry Tortugas, Florida, is expected around 3:36 a.m.
SpaceX
A SpaceX recovery ship is stationed nearby to recover the capsule and help the crew members out of the spacecraft for routine post-landing medical checks before a helicopter flight to shore and reunions with family and friends.
The Polaris Dawn mission, financed by Isaacman, in cooperation with SpaceX, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday. Right off the bat, the crew set a new altitude record for a piloted spacecraft in Earth orbit, reaching a high point, or apogee, of 875 miles.
That’s farther from Earth than anyone has flown since the final Apollo voyage to the moon in 1972.
Early Thursday, the crew set another record when Isaacman and Gillis took turns floating just outside the capsule’s hatch in the first non-government spacewalk ever conducted.
“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman marveled, taking in a spectacular view of the borderless planet below as he floated through the Crew Dragon’s hatch.
The goal of the brief excursions was to test the SpaceX-designed pressure suits in the harsh environment of space, assessing their mobility and checking the motion of wrist, elbow and shoulder joints to help engineers design improved versions for future flights to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
Along with a full slate of biomedical research, the crew also tested laser communications technology linking the Crew Dragon to the Starlink constellation of commercial internet relay satellites.
“Early this morning via @Starlink space lasers, the Polaris Dawn crew chatted with SpaceX teams over coffee and donuts,” SpaceX posted on X Saturday. “During the 40+ minute uninterrupted video call, Dragon completed half an orbit over the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., cutting southeast over the Atlantic Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope.”
Earlier in the mission, Gillis, an accomplished violist, participated in what amounted to an international concert, performing composer John Williams’ “Star Wars” song “Rey’s Theme,” accompanied by young musicians in the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Sweden and Uganda.
The Polaris Dawn mission is the first of three planned by Isaacman, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, in cooperation with Musk.
The second flight will be another Crew Dragon mission while the third will be the first piloted flight of SpaceX’s huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket, now under development in Texas.
It’s not known how much Isaacman is paying for the flights or how much SpaceX funded on its own.
Polaris Dawn is SpaceX’s fifth commercial Crew Dragon flight to orbit and its 14th including NASA missions carrying crew members to the International Space Station. The California rocket builder has now launched 54 men and women to orbit since piloted flights began in May 2020.
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Electric vehicles raise concerns about whether safety infrastructure can handle their weight in a crash
As the number of electric vehicles on U.S. roads continues to rise, concern has emerged about the ability of existing safety infrastructure to handle their increased weight. Guardrails and other roadside safety barriers, typically tested against vehicles weighing around 5,000 pounds, are now being challenged by EVs that often exceed that weight.
In January, a 2021 Tesla crashed into a guardrail on the 405 Freeway in Irvine, California. The vehicle appears to have smashed through the barrier and careened off the roadway, ultimately killing the driver.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska are testing how U.S. infrastructure matches up to EVs. They crashed a 7,000-pound electric pickup — weighing 2,000 pounds more than a gas-powered pickup — at 62 mph into concrete barriers commonly used as freeway medians. The barriers contained the collision, but chunks of concrete were sent flying, and several of the 5,000-pound barriers were pushed back 10 feet — 50% more than normal.
“Unfortunately, these guardrail systems, which have performed very well with gasoline vehicles historically, do not appear to be containing electric vehicles when impacting the similar types of conditions,” said Cody Stolle, a University of Nebraska associate professor who has been studying the issue.
Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer said there has to be a greater awareness regarding the current standards for guardrails and barriers to encourage further research.
“It was eye-opening. There was a lot of damage. And again, if there would’ve been vehicles on the other side of that barrier, we would’ve seen a severe accident,” said Fischer.
A guardrail is supposed to work by containing a vehicle and redirecting it back toward the road. But in a recent test by the Texas Transportation Institute, a standard guardrail failed when an electric sedan hit it, raising further concerns about the ability of existing infrastructure to handle the heavier weight of EVs.
More than 19,000 people died in crashes where their vehicle left the roadway last year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This makes up nearly half of all traffic deaths. Guardrails and similar roadway barriers are designed to reduce the number and severity of these crashes.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy are concerned about the additional weight from EVs causing more severe crashes.
“Our guardrails and crash attenuators, they are rated up to 5,000 pounds. Many of these [electric] vehicles go up to 10,000 pounds, so that has an impact on safety,” Homendy said during a Senate hearing in March.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that half of all new car sales will be EVs by 2032, leaving limited time to address these concerns and upgrade roadside safety barriers.
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