SpaceX Polaris Dawn spacewalk: Is the US breaking a 50-year-old space law?
Al Jazeera
It will be the first-ever spacewalk on a private mission. But does the US bear no responsibility for SpaceX’s soaring ambitions?
It’s a mission like no other. On Thursday morning, the SpaceX-operated Polaris Dawn will attempt something that’s never been done before: private civilians embarking on a spacewalk.
SpaceX’s newest adventure launched on Tuesday morning, sending four civilian astronauts on a five-day mission to a distance further from Earth than any crewed voyage since the Apollo programme in 1972.
Polaris Dawn is led by billionaire entrepreneur, Jared Isaacman, and crewed by two SpaceX employees and a former military pilot. After weeks of delays due to technical checks and weather, its astronauts are now weightless.
Until now, only government space programmes have commandeered spacewalks. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has new suits and big goals, and it wants to test them as fast as possible. It is now the only private company that delivers humans to live and work in space, and NASA, the space agency of the United States, relies on it.
Polaris Dawn is not a NASA mission, and it is not regulated by the US government. So when its astronauts exit their capsule and ‘walk’ in space, it will mark a massive first for the private industry that is starting to dominate realms beyond Earth.
