Two private astronauts aboard a SpaceX spacecraft—including tech billionaire Jared Isaacman—completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk on Thursday, a milestone for the all-civilian Polaris Dawn mission as the company moves toward commercializing space travel
Isaacman, 41, exited SpaceX’s Dragon capsule just before 7 a.m. EDT and was followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis.
Isaacman and Gillis spent about 10 minutes each outside the Dragon capsule as it flew over Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Ocean, later returning to the spacecraft and completing the spacewalk around 8 a.m.
The Polaris Dawn mission—which includes crew members Scott Poteet and Anna Menon, who remained in the capsule—launched aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday.
Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, said the mission “represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry” and the agency’s goal of building a “vibrant U.S. space economy.”
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The mission is also the furthest crewed space mission since NASA’s Apollo moon missions in the 1970s, reaching an altitude of about 870 miles.
The Polaris Dawn crew experiences a sunrise roughly every 106 minutes, according to SpaceX.
Polaris Dawn launched as a five-day mission to test out SpaceX’s spacecraft and spacesuit as part of the company’s goal of commercializing space travel. The mission will also test SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communication network by sending down information from other experiments aboard the spacecraft, including tests of how radiation in space affects the human body. Isaacman, who funded the mission, told Space.com SpaceX intends to send out two other Polaris missions that may include a trip to the Hubble Space Telescope. He added the three missions will likely contribute to SpaceX’s mission of sending humans to the moon and Mars, echoing billionaire CEO Elon Musk, who has said he aims to send colonizing missions to Mars.
Isaacman, the founder and CEO of the payment processing firm Shift4 Payments, has a net worth of $1.9 billion, according to our estimates. Isaacman owns roughly 38% of shares in the company, which handles payments for about a third of America’s restaurants and hotels. He was among the crew of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the first orbital spaceflight featuring only private citizens.
