Stratham resident to pilot historic, high-flying SpaceX mission, Polaris Dawn

The upcoming civilian-led Polaris Dawn mission to space, featuring a first-of-its-kind commercial spacewalk to be attempted 435 miles above the Earth, will be piloted by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a Durham native and University of New Hampshire graduate, who now lives in Stratham.

With his sights set on history, Poteet will be the mission pilot at the helm of the Falcon 9, set to blast into space on Monday. Poteet is a 1996 graduate of UNH, where he participated in the school’s Air Force ROTC program.

The ambitious SpaceX mission will depart NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday, Aug. 26. Key goals for the anticipated five-day flight include hitting the highest altitude of any human spaceflight mission in more than 50 years since the Apollo program, ascending over three times higher than the International Space Station.

Poteet and the three other Polaris Dawn participants took part in a press conference Monday in Florida after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center one week before liftoff.

“It has been an awesome journey preparing for this mission,” he said Monday. “It also took … an entire organization, 14,000 employees, and some of the brightest and smartest engineers I've ever met have been a part of this. We're just so thankful for the resources and the time and effort they put into this mission.”

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder and chief executive officer of Shift4 Payments, is the commander of the Polaris Dawn mission. Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both SpaceX engineers, round out the four-person crew that will be aboard the Falcon 9.

Poteet described the team’s training and preparations that have taken place over the course of two-and-a-half years.

In his two decades in the military, Poteet accrued an estimated 1,500 hours of flight simulation readying for combat. In advance of the Falcon 9’s launch, he said he’s tallied 2,000 hours of flight simulation training.

“On a personal level, flying fighter jets in the Air Force for 20 years, combat experience, operational test experience, leading many red flag exercises, and fighter weapons school, I can tell you without a doubt (that) this has been some of the most challenging training that I've ever experienced,” he said. “I could not imagine a more qualified crew than these three individuals leading the charge getting prepared for this mission.”

The 2,000 hours of flight simulation included practicing nominal procedures, contingency operations and emergency procedures, Poteet said.

The crew’s preparation also required them to complete several high-endurance and high-adrenaline activities, including hiking the nearly 20,000-foot-high Cotopaxi, an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. The Polaris Dawn team also partook in scuba diving and went skydiving at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

During the mission, the crew will be tasked with conducting about 40 health research experiments and testing new SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity spacesuits that will be used during the spacewalk.

“Building a base on the Moon and a city on Mars will require millions of spacesuits,” the Polaris Program notes of the new gear being debuted in space by Poteet and company. “The development of this suit and the execution of the spacewalk will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions as life becomes multiplanetary.”

The spacewalk is scheduled to occur on the third day of the mission, according to the Polaris Program.

The astronauts will also be the inaugural space mission crew to test the Starlink laser-based communications system in orbit.

Money raised from the mission will support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“After more than two years of training, we are excited to embark on this mission,” Isaacman said in a prepared statement Monday. “We are incredibly thankful for this opportunity and to the thousands of SpaceX engineers who have contributed to this endeavor. We hope the results from our mission will accelerate SpaceX’s vision to make life multiplanetary and support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and its efforts to improve global survival rates for childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Throughout our mission, we will aim to inspire humankind to look up and imagine what we can achieve here on Earth and in the worlds beyond our own.”

Poteet, a former Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration pilot, was command pilot with over 3,200 flying hours in the F-16, A-4, T-38, T-37, T-3 and the Alpha Jet during his military service, working over 400 hours of combat time during Operations Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Joint Guardian, Freedom’s Sentinel and Resolute Support.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Stratham resident to pilot historic, high-flying SpaceX mission, Polaris Dawn