SpaceX has revealed the Crew Dragon capsules for a historic flight around Earth with a private spacewalk. Photo

The US company SpaceX has unveiled Dragon capsules for the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 astronaut missions. They will be launched into space on August 26 and September 24, 2024.

The company said the Double Dragons are being prepared for flight ahead of the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 space missions. Both capsules will launch from Florida's Space Coast in less than a month, Space.com wrote.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions in the Polaris program funded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, according to SpaceX. Isaacman, SpaceX's lead space operations engineer and mission pilot Scott Poteet and company engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon will fly on the five-day trip to orbit Earth.

This will be the first private spacewalk in history to reach a distance of 700 kilometers from Earth - farther than any crewed mission from the Apollo era. Interestingly, Gillis and Manon will plunge deeper into the void of space than any women have before. After all, all of the Apollo astronauts were men.

Polaris Dawn will fly around our planet on its own and will not connect to the International Space Station (ISS).

As for Crew-9, it will be the ninth operational long-term astronaut mission that SpaceX is performing on the ISS for NASA. The plan is to send NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Zina Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, as well as Alexander Gorbunov of Roscosmos, to the orbiting laboratory.

That lineup could change, however. After all, NASA is considering using Crew Dragon to return astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to Earth, who have been stuck on the ISS since June due to a malfunction in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.

If NASA decides it's too risky to send Williams and Wilmore home on the Starliner, they will launch Crew-9 with only two astronauts on board. And Crew Dragon with this mission will carry the veteran astronauts along with two crew members home early next year.

Only verified information we have in Telegram-channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!