CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Billionaire Jared Issacman, who flew to space once with SpaceX, is already set for launch No. 2 in early summer.

The mission calls for new spacesuits introduced this past weekend designed so the crew can survive the plan to suck out all of the air of the spacecraft and allow Issacman and a crewmate to make the first commercial spacewalk in history.

Flying on the Crew Dragon Resilience again, the mission dubbed Polaris Dawn is the first of up to three flights Issacman wants to fly, culminating in what is supposed to be the first crewed mission of SpaceX’s Starship.

For now, though, the mission has to use SpaceX’s existing rocket options, so he and his three crewmates will launch atop a Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39-A. It will mark Issacman’s return after his Inspiration4 mission in 2021.

That flight featured three crewmates chosen through a series of contests and fundraisers as well as a representative of his altruistic target, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

His crewmates for Polaris Dawn include two SpaceX employees and one of Issacman’s pilot friends. The SpaceX crew are mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon and mission specialist Sarah Gillis. Issacman’s flight buddy is mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and demonstration pilot who flew with the Air Force Thunderbirds. He acted as mission director for the Inspiration4 flight.

The crew and SpaceX technical leads held a discussion Sunday on X to detail parts of the mission and discuss the new extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit the quartet will wear during the planned spacewalk.

“We hope to learn an awful lot about our suit and the operation associated with it because it’s the first commercial EVA, the first time you don’t have government astronauts undertaking such a mission,” Issacman said. “That’s important because if we are going to get to the moon or Mars someday we’re going to have to get out of our vehicles, out of the safety of the habitat and explore and build and repair things.”

Isaacman will be joined by Evans outside the spacecraft. But Resilience doesn’t have an airlock, which means all four crew will need the special suits to endure the vacuum of space as the entire cabin will lack an atmosphere.

The suits are similar to the intravehicular activity (IVA) suits that have been worn on the 13 crewed Dragon flights. The new EVA suits have helmets with visors that include digital heads-up displays, allowing the wearer know the suit’s pressure, temperature and relative humidity.

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