A historic moment occurred as a pioneering duo of astronauts, the first private civilians, completed a spacewalk. NASA hailed this achievement as a significant step forward for the commercial space industry.
The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, led by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, venturing deeper into space than any human has in 50 years, since the Apollo program in the 1970s.
The four-member crew’s Dragon spacecraft orbited at 700 kilometres above Earth, with pure oxygen flowing into their suits to officially begin their spacewalk, also known as an “extravehicular activity.”
Isaacman opened the hatch, climbed through, and navigated the structure called “Skywalker,” admiring the breathtaking view of Earth below him.
“It’s gorgeous,” he shared with mission control in California, where teams celebrated important milestones.
SpaceX outperforms the competition
This was another significant achievement for SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk in 2002. Initially underestimated by the industry, it has now surpassed aerospace giant Boeing by delivering a spaceship to transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
Prior to opening the hatch, the crew underwent a procedure to remove nitrogen from their bloodstream to avoid decompression sickness. The cabin pressure was gradually adjusted to match the vacuum of space.
Isaacman and crewmate Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX engineer, tested SpaceX’s advanced suits with enhanced features like heads-up displays, helmet cameras, and improved joint mobility systems before returning inside.
The spacewalk concluded after an hour and 46 minutes, following the repressurization of the cabin. While it was a milestone for the commercial sector, it did not match the adventurous feats of early space exploration.
Early space travelers like Soviet astronaut Alexei Leonov floated away from their spacecraft on tethers, and some Space Shuttle astronauts even used jetpacks to fly untethered.
