Spacex’s Polaris Dawn has officially made space history. The four-person civilian team, led by tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, has successfully completed the first commercial spacewalk, lasting about two hours, with Isaacman and Gillis venturing outside the spacecraft for nearly 20 minutes.
SpaceX and the Polaris Dawn crew have completed the first commercial spacewalk!
“SpaceX, back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.” — Mission Commander @rookisaacman during Dragon egress and seeing our planet from ~738 km pic.twitter.com/lRczSv5i4k
— Polaris (@PolarisProgram) September 12, 2024
Reports reveal that the entire crew were exposed to the vacuum of space, but only Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis exited the capsule. This marks Day 3 of the five-day private space mission. Upon witnessing space for the very first time, Isaacman said to the crew back home, “SpaceX, back at home we have a lot of work to do, but from here it looks like a perfect world.” This historic spacewalk was delayed for about two and a half hours, commencing at close to 10:50 GMT after the hatch of the spacecraft was first opened since blastoff.
Dragon is performing the spacewalk in an elliptical orbit of ~190 x 700 km today, after reaching a max altitude of 1,408.1 km on day two of the mission and breaking the Earth-orbit record set by Gemini 11 over 50 years ago when that spacecraft reached 1,373 km
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 12, 2024
When Isaacman first stepped into the infinite abyss of outer space, he began limb movements that he had memorized earlier to test out mobility in outer space. Minutes after Isaacman witnessed outer space, he was replaced by Gillis, who repeated similar movements to test out the durability of the bespoke SpaceX space suit. Isaacman and Gillis were the only members of the team to venture outside the hatch, secured by a 12-foot tether linked to the capsule.
The four-person crew experienced no severe symptoms, such as acute motion sickness that can prove fatal in extreme cases due to pressure differences. As part of the spacewalk, the crew completed a whole host of experiments, such as inter-satellite laser communication between the spacecraft and Space X’s Starlink satellite constellation.
The Polaris Dawn crew will return to Earth no sooner than September 15th. But this does not mark the end of the Polaris program. Isaacman is gearing up for two more flights in the Polaris series—another one in a Dragon and the last on the maiden mission of the Starship.
