The first-ever all-civilian spacewalk was accomplished on Thursday by four private persons traveling around the planet in a SpaceX capsule.
The crew of the Polaris Dawn mission, consisting of SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, launched into space on Tuesday to commence a five-day journey.
After a few hours of delay, their spacewalk started at 6:12 a.m. ET and ended at 7:58 a.m. ET.
A significant accomplishment for the Polaris Dawn mission was the spacewalk’s completion. In the past, spacewalks were exclusively carried out by astronauts employed by government space agencies to construct or renovate space stations, fix satellites, and finish scientific research.
Gillis and Isaacman left the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on a tether during Thursday’s excursion, and they each spent around ten minutes in the vacuum of space. All four crew members tested and donned specially built spacesuits for the occasion, even though they were the only ones to leave the spacecraft. This is because the entire Crew Dragon capsule was depressurized and exposed to vacuum conditions because it lacked a pressurized airlock.
In general, the goal of the Polaris Dawn mission is to test methods and equipment that may be applied to longer-term space missions in the future. The crew members had already ascended to 870 miles above Earth’s surface, the highest orbital altitude attained by humans since the end of the Apollo moon mission in 1972.
Isaacman provided funding for the flight at an undisclosed amount.