WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Askume) – Two astronauts – a billionaire and an engineer – completed the world’s first private spacewalk in orbit outside a SpaceX capsule on Thursday, wearing a new series of spacesuits, a risky feat that had previously been performed only by astronauts from the National Space Program.
As astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission lifted off together and each spent about 10 minutes outside the gummy-sized Crew Dragon capsule, Elon Musk’s company once again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial space flight.
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Isaacman, who is funding the Polaris mission, flew Inspiration4 with SpaceX in 2021.
The mission, broadcast live on the SpaceX website, tested some unprecedented equipment, including a slim spacesuit and full depressurization of the Crew Dragon capsule, which Musk hopes will be used in ambitious future private missions to advance technology.
“Back home, we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said after stepping out of the spacecraft, which glimpsed the outline of the half-lit planet.
It is one of the most dangerous missions yet for SpaceX , the only private company with a proven capability to regularly send people into and out of Earth orbit.
The capsule was fully depressurized before the spacewalk began at about 6:52 a.m. ET (1052 GMT), with the astronauts relying on SpaceX-developed suits for oxygen, which are provided through an umbilical connection to the Crew Dragon.
Isaacman, 41, and Gillis, 30, ascended to space through the hatch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, testing various body movements in the spacesuits and sending feedback to ground control systems to inform future design iterations. Their posture appeared rigid as they could move their arms at the elbows and shoulders, but not much at the waist, back and neck.
The mission, which tested spacesuit design and capsule procedures among other things, was designed to test the limits of what private companies can do in orbit.
Ground teams at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California headquarters watched as the capsule doors were closed and checked for leaks as the astronauts returned to their seats in the cockpit.
The first American spacewalk, aboard a Gemini capsule in 1965, used a procedure similar to Thursday’s: The capsule was depressurized, the hatch opened and an astronaut in a spacesuit walked into space via a tether.
‘One giant leap’
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, whose agency began funding Crew Dragon’s development nearly a decade ago, praised Thursday’s accomplishment.
“Today’s success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA’s long-term goal of building a vibrant U.S. space economy,” Nielsen wrote on social media.
Isaacman declined to say how much he paid, but based on the roughly $55 million per seat on other Crew Dragon flights, his mission could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Gillis began working at SpaceX as an intern in 2015. Menon, 38, is an engineer at SpaceX.
During Wednesday, the spacecraft orbited Earth at least six times in an elliptical orbit that is as shallow as 118 miles (190 kilometers) and extends as far as 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), the longest distance traveled by humans into space since the last such trip, the 1972 U.S. Apollo moon landing program.
In the past, only government astronauts who had undergone years of training would perform spacewalks. Since its inception in 2000, there have been about 270 astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) and 16 Chinese astronauts on China’s Tiangong space station.
Poteet said Polaris crews spent 2-1/2 years training on SpaceX mission simulations and engaging in “experiential learning” in challenging and uncomfortable environments.
Russia’s Soyuz MS-26 mission delivered two cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut to the International Space Station on Wednesday, raising the number of astronauts in orbit to a record 19, bringing the number of people on the International Space Station to 12. A Chinese astronaut.
Crew Dragon, the only U.S. vehicle capable of reliably putting people into orbit and returning them to Earth, has flown more than a dozen astronaut missions since 2001, mainly for NASA operations.
The agency began developing the capsule as part of a program to build commercial and privately built U.S. vehicles capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Boeing’s Starliner space capsule is also being developed under the program. Starliner launched the first astronauts to the International Space Station in June, an arduous test mission that ended with the capsule returning empty this month, leaving the crew on the station to await their return next year on Crew Dragon.
