SpaceX Completes 1st-Ever Spacewalk By A Commercial Company As Part Of Polaris Dawn Mission

Polaris Dawn crew members Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis separately exited SpaceX‘s Dragon spacecraft into the vacuum of space at an altitude of 435 miles (700 km) on Thursday, marking the first-ever private spacewalk.

What Happened: While Isaacman and Gillis exited the spacecraft tethered to an oxygen line, Kidd Poteet and Anna Menon of the 4-member all-civilian crew stayed within the spacecraft.

Isaacman exited the spacecraft first after the Dragon’s cabin was depressurized and the hatch opened, followed by Gillis. Gillis’ return to the capsule and subsequent closing of the hatch marked the end of the spacewalk. The capsule has now been repressurized. Both Isaacman and Gillis spent about 12 minutes each outside of the spacecraft, testing the SpaceX-designed EVA spacesuits.

While space agency NASA routinely conducts extravehicular activities with government astronauts, no commercial player or civilians have attempted it before, making this a landmark mission for SpaceX and commercial spaceflight companies.

“Today's spacewalk is the first extravehicular activity (EVA) using commercially developed hardware, procedures, and the new SpaceX EVA suit,” SpaceX said on Thursday.

Why It Matters: Polaris Dawn is the first of up to three human spaceflight missions planned under the Polaris program founded by Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched the mission to space from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at around 5:23 a.m. ET on Tuesday. The Dragon spacecraft and the crew will spend five days in orbit before turning to Earth.

On day two of the mission, the mission touched its maximum target altitude of 870 miles, marking the farthest humans have ventured from Earth in over 50 years since the end of the Apollo program. The International Space Station (ISS), in comparison, travels to a maximum altitude of only about 285 miles.

Check out more of Benzinga’s Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link.

Read More:

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk Considers Making Steering Yoke Stationary While Cybertruck Parks Itself

Image courtesy screenshot from SpaceX’s live stream