The first flight of the private Polaris astronaut mission program is no longer scheduled until April of next year; this is a delay of almost a year and a half from the original plan. Jared Isaacman, the billionaire backer and principal mission manager of the Polaris program, said in social media posts on Dec. 9 that the launch of Polaris Dawn is now planned for April 2024.

“Launch target is April and the pace of learning is accelerating” — Wrote He noted that he was at SpaceX that day to test the extravehicular activity (EVA) suits that will be used during the mission.

Space travel is one of Polaris Dawn’s primary goals, requiring both the development of an EVA suit and the modification of the hatchless Crew Dragon. Both of these issues are issues, he said in a follow-up post.

He wrote that there is a “huge difference” between the spacesuits worn by Crew Dragon astronauts and the EVA suit, which was “designed from the ground up to be exposed to the void outside of a spacecraft.” The lack of an airlock also requires modifications to Crew Dragon’s software and hardware to ensure the cabin is depressurized before the spacewalk begins and re-pressurized afterwards.

Other challenges he identified include demonstrating intersatellite laser communications links between the Crew Dragon spacecraft and SpaceX’s Starlink constellation and testing electronics for the higher radiation environment of the Polaris Dawn mission. Crew Dragon will fly into an orbit that will take it to an altitude of 1,400 kilometers, much higher than previous Crew Dragon missions, and closer to the inner edge of the Van Allen Belt.

The launch of Polaris Dawn has been delayed by almost a year and a half. When Isaacman announced the Polaris schedule in February 2022, five months after directing the special Inspiration4 astronaut mission aboard Crew Dragon, he said the Polaris Dawn flight was planned for the fourth quarter of 2022.

This launch date has been postponed multiple times since the announcement. Speaking at a conference in February, Isaacman said the mission had been postponed until the summer. “We’re just months away from flying,” he said at the time. However, the launch was postponed again to the summer. The launch will “probably” be delayed until early 2024, Isaacman said in an interview on the CNBC podcast. The mission “should launch in the first quarter of 2024,” he said during a panel discussion at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September.

These public comments and social media posts were among several updates to the Polaris program in recent months. The program’s website has not released an official update since May. The most recent schedule update, aside from Isaacman’s comments on social media, was the schedule of air show performances planned for 2024.

“This is a development program with ambitious goals. Deviations in the program should be expected,” Isaakman wrote on December 9.