Al Root

The historic SpaceX Polaris mission is slated to leave Earth on Tuesday -- weather permitting.

Sunday, Elon Musk's 22-year-old space company posted a link on X indicating the Polaris mission is slated to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:38 a.m. Eastern time on Sept. 10. The launch can be watched here.

The Polaris mission is noteworthy in several ways. A Dragon space capsule is slated to reach the highest Earth orbit since the Apollo missions. The mission is also designed to include the first spacewalk by commercial astronauts wearing SpaceX-built spacesuits.

Four astronauts are part of the mission: Commander Jared Isaacman, pilot Kidd Poteet, mission specialist Sarah Gillis, and medical officer Anna Menon.

The mission has been delayed a couple of times by a technical issue and weather. Looking ahead, the weather is "40% favorable" according to SpaceX. The current backup date is Wednesday, Sept. 11.

The weather has to look good for takeoff and when Polaris is slated to return a few days later. The exact date and time depend on conditions. No one said reaching space was easy.

SpaceX has made it look easy, though. It pioneered reusable rockets, dramatically lowering the cost of space launches. SpaceX has launched more than 380 times, and reused rockets more than 315 times.

Now, SpaceX handles roughly half of the world's space launches, has built a global space-based Wi-Fi business called Starlink, and ferries NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA in its reusable spaceship called Dragon -- which is the space capsule for the Polaris mission.

The Polaris Dragon capsule will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX is also developing a larger rocket called Starship.

A larger reusable rocket lowers the costs of reaching space again. Starship is also the rocket Elon Musk believes will take humans to Mars.

"The first Starships to Mars will launch in two years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens," Musk tweeted on Saturday. Humans have to wait for the orbits of Mars and Earth to align to shorten the trip. Mars is currently about 132 million miles from Earth. (The moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth.) In a couple of years, the distance from Earth to Mars will be some 35 million miles.

Those initial Starships will be uncrewed. Musk sees crewed missions leaving around 2028, and a colony on Mars in about 20 years from now.

It's all the stuff of science fiction that SpaceX is helping turn into reality.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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September 09, 2024 11:42 ET (15:42 GMT)

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