This image made from video provided by NASA and SpaceX shows from right in blue, Japan’s Kimiya Yui, NASA’s Zena Cardman, NASA’s Mike Fincke and Russia’s Oleg Platonov, with colleagues up there since March at the International Space Station during a welcome ceremony, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

An attempt to launch last month was postponed hours before liftoff over a small helium leak in ground equipment [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

A crew of four private astronauts on Tuesday were in the final stages of preparation for a risky SpaceX mission to attempt the first-ever private spacewalk using the company’s new spacesuits and a redesigned spacecraft.

A billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX employees are poised to launch at 3:38 a.m. ET (0738 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, the spacecraft’s fifth – and riskiest – private space mission so far.

An attempt to launch last month was postponed hours before liftoff over a small helium leak in ground equipment on SpaceX’s launchpad. SpaceX fixed the leak, but the company’s Falcon 9 was then grounded by U.S. regulators over a booster recovery failure during an unrelated mission, further delaying the Polaris launch.

Permitted to resume Falcon 9 flights, the Polaris mission is now set for a pre-dawn launch Tuesday, but with only a 40% chance of favourable weather, according to U.S. Space Force launch weather modeling. SpaceX has other launch opportunities Tuesday at 5:23 a.m. and 7:09 a.m.

“Crew safety is absolutely paramount and this mission carries more risk than usual, as it will be the furthest humans have traveled from Earth since Apollo and the first commercial spacewalk!,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, wrote about the mission last month on his social media site X.

Only highly trained, well-funded government astronauts have done spacewalks in the past. There have been roughly 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since its creation in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing’s Tiangong space station.

The SpaceX mission, called Polaris Dawn, will last about five days in an oval-shaped orbit that passes as close to Earth as 190 km (118 miles) and as far as 1,400 km (870 miles), the farthest any humans will have traveled since the end of the United States’ Apollo moon program in 1972.

The spacewalk is planned for the mission’s third day at 700 km in altitude and will last around 20 minutes. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon craft will slowly depressurise its entire cabin – it has no airlock like the ISS – and all four astronauts will rely on their slimmed-down, SpaceX-built spacesuits for oxygen.

The first U.S. spacewalk was in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, and used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was depressurised, the hatch opened, and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether.

Jared Isaacman, 41, a pilot and the billionaire founder of electronic payment company Shift4, is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did for his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021. He has declined to say how much he is paying for the missions, but they are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Joining him is mission pilot Scott Poteet, 50, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel; and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis, 30, and Anna Menon, 38, both senior engineers at the company.

For the spacewalk, Isaacman and Gillis will exit the spacecraft tethered by an oxygen line while Poteet and Menon stay in the cabin.

The mission is the first in Isaacman’s private Polaris program that includes a follow-on Crew Dragon mission in the future, followed by a flight on SpaceX’s Starship, a giant rocket the company has spent billions of dollars developing as a flagship moon and Mars vehicle.

The four-person crew are effectively test subjects for an array of scientific experiments that will aim to shed light on how cosmic radiation and the vacuum of space affect the human body, adding to decades of studies on astronauts living aboard the ISS.

Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied heavily on the company and its Crew Dragon, which has flown nine astronaut missions to and from the ISS for the agency as the only U.S. crew-grade vehicle in operation.

The company has previously flown four private missions: Isaacman’s Inspiration4, and three private astronaut flights arranged by Houston-based mission broker Axiom Space.

Boeing is struggling to develop a similar spacecraft, Starliner, that could rival Crew Dragon. But Starliner’s latest NASA test mission that began in June – its first time flying a crew – left its astronauts on the ISS last week because of issues with its propulsion system.

An attempt to launch last month was postponed hours before liftoff over a small helium leak in ground equipment [File]
| Photo Credit: Reuters

 A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday (September 10, 2024), aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA’s Apollo moonshots.

Unlike his previous chartered flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman shared the cost with SpaceX this time around, which included developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they’ll hold up in the harsh vacuum.

If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won’t venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.

Isaacman, along with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday, midway through the five-day flight.

But first the passengers are shooting for way beyond the International Space Station — an altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), which would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA’s Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther.

The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height — filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris — before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew.

All four wore SpaceX’s spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment.

Isaacman and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They’ll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers and no jetpack showboating. Only NASA’s suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.

Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX’s Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from inside. Like SpaceX’s previous astronaut flights, this one will end with a splashdown off the Florida coast.

“We’re sending you hugs from the ground,” Launch Director Frank Messina radioed after the crew reached orbit. “May you make history and come home safely.”

Isaacman replied: “We wouldn’t be on this journey without all 14,000 of you back at SpaceX and everyone else cheering us on.”

At a preflight news conference, Isaacman — CEO and founder of the credit card processing company Shift4 — refused to say how much he invested in the flight. “Not a chance,” he said.

SpaceX teamed up with Isaacman to pay for spacesuit development and associated costs, said William Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president who once headed space mission operations for NASA.

“We’re really starting to push the frontiers with the private sector,” Gerstenmaier said.

It’s the first of three trips that Isaacman bought from Elon Musk 2 1/2 years ago, soon after returning from his first private SpaceX spaceflight in 2021. Isaacman bankrolled that tourist ride for an undisclosed sum, taking along contest winners and a childhood cancer survivor. The trip raised hundreds of millions for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Spacesuit development took longer than anticipated, delaying this first so-called Polaris Dawn flight until now. Training was extensive; Poteet said it rivaled anything he experienced during his Air Force flying career.

As SpaceX astronaut trainers, Gillis and Menon helped Isaacman and his previous team — as well as NASA’s professional crews — prepare for their rides.

“I wasn’t alive when humans walked on the moon. I’d certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars, and venturing out and exploring our solar system,” the 41-year-old Isaacman said before liftoff.

Poor weather caused a two-week delay. The crew needed favorable forecasts not only for launch, but for splashdown days later. With limited supplies and no ability to reach the space station, they had no choice but to wait for conditions to improve.

When a Chinese rocket malfunctioned shortly after launch in April 2020, destroying Indonesia’s $220 million Nusantara-2 satellite, it was a blow to the archipelago’s efforts to strengthen its communication networks. But it presented an opportunity for one man.

Elon Musk – the owner of SpaceX, the world’s most successful rocket launcher – seized on the failure to prevail over state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corp (CGWIC) as Jakarta’s company of choice for putting satellites into space.

The Chinese contractor had courted Indonesia – Southeast Asia’s largest economy and a key space growth market – with cheap financing, promises of broad support for its space ambitions and the geopolitical heft of Beijing.

A senior government official and two industry officials in Jakarta familiar with the matter told Reuters the malfunction marked a turning point for Indonesia to move away from Chinese space contractors in favour of companies owned by Musk.

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Nusantara-2 was the second satellite launch awarded by Indonesia to CGWIC, matching the two carried out by SpaceX at that time. Since its failure, SpaceX has launched two Indonesian satellites, with a third set for Tuesday; China has handled none. SpaceX edged out Beijing through a combination of launch reliability, cheaper reusable rockets, and the personal relationship Musk nurtured with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Reuters found. Following a meeting between the two men in Texas in 2022, SpaceX also won regulatory approval for its Starlink satellite internet service.

The SpaceX deals mark a rare instance of a Western company making inroads in Indonesia, whose telecommunications sector is dominated by Chinese companies that offer low costs and easy financing. The successes came after Indonesia resisted U.S. pressure to abandon its deals with Chinese tech giant Huawei, citing its dependence on Beijing’s technology. Details of this shift, which were described to Reuters by a dozen people, including Indonesian and U.S. officials, industry players and analysts, have not previously been reported. Some of them spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to talk to media.

“SpaceX has never failed in launching our satellites,” said Sri Sanggrama Aradea, head of the satellite infrastructure division at BAKTI, an Indonesian communications ministry agency.

The April 2020 incident makes it “hard” for Jakarta to turn to CGWIC again, he added. SpaceX, CGWIC and Pasifik Satelit Nusantara – a key shareholder in the Nusantara-2 project – did not respond to questions for this story. China’s Foreign Ministry said in response to Reuters questions that “Chinese aerospace enterprises are continuing their space cooperation with Indonesia in various forms.” It did not elaborate.

Presidential office spokesperson Ari Dwipayana said the government prioritises efficient and capable technology that meets the need of Indonesians when awarding contracts.

The tussle between SpaceX and China offers a window into a much larger battle to dominate a rapidly expanding space industry.

The global satellite market – including manufacturing, services and launches – was worth $281 billion in 2022, or 73% of all space business, according to U.S. consultancy BryceTech.

SPACE RACE

China launched a record 67 rockets last year, out of 223 globally, according to a report by Harvard professor and orbital tracker Jonathan McDowell. The vast majority were launched by CGWIC.

That put China only behind the United States, which had 109 launches, 90% of which were done by SpaceX, the report found.

Washington and Beijing are also competing over satellite-based communications networks.

SpaceX’s Starlink, which owns around 60% of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting earth, is dominant in the satellite internet sphere. But, last year, China began launching satellites for its rival Guowang broadband mega-constellation.

U.S. military officials have said China wants to use satellites and space technology to spy on rivals and increase military capabilities.

China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to Reuters the U.S. allegations were a smear and that Washington was using the concerns as a pretext to expand its influence in space.

Unlike its Chinese counterpart, NASA relies primarily on privately owned rockets from firms such as SpaceX, which has billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts. But the U.S. government and military are concerned about their reliance on SpaceX, especially given Musk’s muscular business style, according to one current and one former U.S. official working on space policy.

While legacy U.S. defence contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin typically consult the State Department before making foreign deals, Musk and SpaceX dealt directly with Jakarta, the two officials said.

In response to Reuters’ questions, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said the company “works closely with the U.S. Government, our allied nations and international customers”. Boeing declined to comment and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Pentagon spokesperson Jeff Jurgensen declined to answer specific questions about SpaceX, but said the Department of Defense’s “many space industry partnerships have a proven track record of success”. Nicholas Eftimiades, a former U.S. intelligence officer and expert on Chinese espionage operations at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said SpaceX’s CEO had ruffled some feathers in the U.S. capital: “Elon Musk does things his way and some officials don’t like that”.

Nonetheless, Musk’s deals bucked a long-running trend of Western firms losing out to Chinese businesses in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of over 17,000 islands that is home to more than 270 million people.

Widodo said in October that Beijing is set to become the largest foreign direct investor in Indonesia within two years, surpassing Singapore. Chinese companies dominate the internet and 5G market, so Beijing was the obvious partner for satellite launches until the 2020 incident, said Andry Satrio Nugroho, an economist at the Jakarta-based Institute for Development of Economics and Finance think-tank.

“Indonesia has a close relationship with China across many sectors. It’s difficult to break China’s dominance.”

STARBASE MEETING

In May 2022, Jokowi, as the powerful Indonesian president is popularly known, visited a SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

“Welcome to Starbase,” Musk said, smiling and shaking hands with the president, who was seeking Tesla investment in Indonesia’s nickel sector.

Widodo’s two-hour visit included 30 minutes of talks with Musk at an office packed with miniature rockets and then a tour of the production area, according to an Indonesian official with direct knowledge. The president has long sought to build an EV industry in Indonesia, which has the world’s biggest reserves of nickel, a key element in electric batteries. The term-limited leader leaves office in October, but experts say Widodo will remain a major power broker after the candidate he tacitly supported to be his successor claimed victory in the Feb. 14 presidential election. Widodo told Reuters last year that to woo Musk, he has also offered tax breaks, a concession to mine nickel and a subsidy scheme on EV purchases. But a Tesla EV or battery factory in Indonesia, which Widodo has publicly asked for, have not materialised.

Instead, days after the trip, according to a source with direct knowledge, Indonesian officials began discussing another of Musk’s businesses: Starlink.

During the Texas meeting, Musk asked Widodo to let Starlink into Indonesia, the source said.

Telkomsat, a subsidiary of state-owned telecoms firm Telkom, was supportive, its former chief executive Endi Fitri Herlianto told Reuters. For months, the telco had sought regulatory approval so that Telkomsat could use Starlink services for cellular backhaul, or connecting mobile base stations to its network, Herlianto said.

Officials were concerned about the potential impact on domestic telcos if a permit was granted. The plan made no headway – until the Boca Chica visit.

“GAME CHANGER”

Less than a month after the Texas meeting, Telkom announced its subsidiary had received Starlink landing rights.

Indonesia’s communication ministry told Reuters that Starlink is only permitted to operate a backhaul service with Telkomsat and that it does not have the right to retail consumer internet services.

Musk “put that ask on the table then and there, so things started,” said the source with knowledge of Indonesian discussions, referring to the May meeting.

Widodo’s spokesperson, Dwipayana, confirmed that Musk and the president discussed opportunities in Indonesia, adding that officials are still in communication with the billionaire about future investments by his businesses, including Tesla.

Telkom did not respond to requests for comment. Last June, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket pushed into orbit the 4.5-tonne Satellite of the Republic of Indonesia (SATRIA-1) – Southeast Asia’s largest satellite.

Nia Satwika, a SATRIA-1 project manager, said SpaceX offered lower costs and had higher availability of launch slots when compared with other operators. “They are a game changer,” she said, referring to SpaceX’s ability to reuse parts of its rockets – a crucial cost advantage over rivals.