The tech billionaire who launched on his own SpaceX flight last year is heading back up to space, aiming for an even higher orbit and the chance to take part in a spacewalk.
Jared Isaacman announced he will make another private spaceflight launching from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre, alongside two SpaceX engineers and a former air force fighter pilot.
On Monday, Isaacman told reporters he and SpaceX are sharing costs for the upcoming flight.
It is the first of three planned flights to try out new tech — including spacewalking suits — culminating in the first flight with people of SpaceX’s new Starship, which is intended for moon and Mars travel.
The four aim to blast off aboard a Falcon rocket no earlier than November. They will circle Earth for up to five days, higher than any previous Dragon capsule or Nasa shuttle.
Isaacman paid undisclosed millions for last September’s three-day spaceflight for himself and three others, the first space tourism flight for Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The September flight reached more than 360 miles high, far higher than the International Space Station.
While it’s unclear how high this next capsule would reach, Issacman said that it would be around the altitude of Nasa’s two-astronaut Gemini flights in the mid-1960s.
Gemini 11 holds the record for the highest astronaut mission outside of the Apollo moonshots — 853 miles.
For the spacewalk, the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurised just as the Gemini capsules were, with crew members in pressurised suits. Isaacman declined to say who or how many would venture outside the capsule.
‘If we are to have a more permanent presence on the moon and some day build a colony on Mars, we have a lot to learn, including better suit designs,’ he said.
They will also use Starlink internet satellites launched by SpaceX to test communication from orbit.
Last week, Musk showed off the Starship, the tallest and most powerful rocket built. SpaceX is awaiting clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before launching it empty from Texas on its first orbital test flight.
On Monday, the FAA said it will not finish its environmental review of the Boca Chica launch and landing site, at the southern tip of Texas, until the end of March.
Isaacman indicated that he would like to be aboard the second spaceflight in this programme named after the triple-star system Polaris — another Dragon mission — and on the first Starship crew as well.
‘Let’s get Polaris Dawn right and then we’ll think about the next mission,’ he said.
He hand-picked his three passengers who helped carry out his September flight: SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, whose husband was chosen by Nasa in December as an astronaut; and Scott Poteet, a retired air force lieutenant colonel.
Poteet also worked for Isaacman’s Shift4 Payments company and Draken International, a high-performance aircraft company the tech tycoon co-founded.
SpaceX plans to test multiple Starship flights before using them to land Nasa astronauts on the moon by around 2025.
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