These two dragons are getting ready to spread their wings.
SpaceX just gave us a look at the Crew Dragon capsules that will fly on the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 astronaut missions, which are scheduled to launch on August 26 and September 24, respectively.
“Double Dragons are being prepared for flight ahead of the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 manned space missions,” the company wrote Wednesday (Aug. 21) in an X-post that showed two photos of the capsules side by side at a processing facility on Florida’s Space Coast.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions in the Polaris program, which is funded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. The flight 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 offer the first private spacewalk ever, traveling as far as 430 miles from Earth – farther than any manned mission since the Apollo era. Gillis and Menon will go deeper into the void than any woman has ever gone before. (The Apollo astronauts were all men.)
The upcoming mission will be the second for Isaacman, who also led and funded Inspiration4’s journey into Earth orbit in September 2021. Like Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn will be a free flyer, orbiting our planet on its own rather than attaching to the International Space Station (ISS).
Related: Polaris Dawn Mission: Meet the Crew Taking the First Commercial Spacewalk
Crew-9 will be the ninth operational long-duration astronaut mission that SpaceX will fly to the ISS for NASA. The current plan is to send Alexsandr Gorbunov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson to the orbiting laboratory.
That list could change, however. NASA is considering bringing astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to Earth on a Crew Dragon. The duo flew on the first manned test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which had engine problems en route to the ISS.
If NASA decides it’s too risky to send Williams and Wilmore home on the Starliner, it will launch Crew-9 with just two astronauts on board. That mission’s Crew Dragon will then bring Williams and Wilmore home along with the two original crew members early next year.
