A small step
SpaceX’s purely civilian mission Polaris Dawn has achieved an incredible feat: the first commercial spacewalk.
After billionaire mission commander Jared Isaacman and his crewmate Sarah Gillis completely depressurized their spacecraft, they carefully climbed out of their Crew Dragon capsule early Thursday morning to get a once-in-a-lifetime look at the Earth below them.
The footage shows Isaacman standing upright with his arms outstretched while holding on to the spacecraft’s “Skywalker” platform, a ladder-like structure that allows him and Gillis to stay in constant contact with the capsule.
The stunt was performed at an altitude of 737 kilometers, almost twice the usual orbit of the International Space Station.
“SpaceX, we still have a lot of work to do at home, but from here it looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman told mission control as he got an unparalleled view of Australia.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1834183614898241617
Huge private leap
Another video of the stunt shows Isaacman from a first-person perspective as he exits the capsule, while SpaceX employees cheer him on at the company headquarters. In total, Isaacman and Gillis spent about eight minutes outside the capsule.
Before leaving the ship, the crew began to slowly depressurize the spacecraft to acclimate to the thin air. After a few hours of travel, the cabin pressure had dropped to 8.6 psi, which is just above the conditions at Mount Everest Base Camp. They also began breathing pure oxygen through the ports of their spacesuits.
When Isaacman and Gillis ventured outside, the pressure in their suits was only 5 psi, just below the summit of Mount Everest.
But even with SpaceX’s innovative extravehicular activity suit (EVA), Isaacman and Gillis were fully connected to their Dragon spacecraft via a supply line, allowing them a steady supply of oxygen and temperature control.
Isaacman and Gillis tested several mobility features of their new spacesuits, including hand and body movements, ankle restraints, and the ability to hold tools during their short stays outdoors the spaceship.
The mission is not only historic as the first commercial spacewalk. After just a few hours, the Polaris Dawn crew reached an apogee point of 869 miles – about three times the altitude of the space station – making it the farthest distance from Earth that a human has traveled since NASA’s Apollo missions half a century ago.
The spacewalk is another major success for Elon Musk-led SpaceX and sets the stage for similar missions in the future.
And NASA is also thrilled.
“Today’s success represents a huge step forward for the commercial space industry and NASA’s long-term goal of building a vibrant U.S. space economy,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
More about the mission: SpaceX astronauts are now farther from Earth than any other human since the Apollo moon missions
