Billionaire completes first spacewalk in SpaceX capsule
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The news: US billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis completed the first-ever private “spacewalk” on Thursday, marking a major milestone for the Elon Musk company and the growing commercial space industry.
The numbers: Bankrolled by Isaacman, a pilot and founder of payments firm Shift4, in collaboration with SpaceX, the Polaris Dawn mission tested SpaceX-developed spacesuits and capsule depressurisation at an altitude of about 450 miles (730 kilometres).
The other two crewmembers, retired USA Air Force pilot Scott Poteet, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, were required to wear the spacesuits as the capsule was fully depressurised and exposed to space in order to open the hatch.
Isaacman and Gillis each spent less than 10 minutes tethered outside the capsule, conducting mobility tests while holding special rails installed at the top of the spacecraft called “skywalker”. The tests will aid future spacesuit designs. The manoeuvre was broadcast by SpaceX.
Isaacman has not disclosed the cost, but Reuters estimates such missions are likely to be priced in the hundreds of millions, based on Crew Dragon's price of roughly USD55 million ($82 million) a seat.
The crew spent over two years training for the mission, which took them as far as 870 miles from Earth—the farthest humans have travelled in space since the last US Apollo mission to the moon in 1972.
What they said: “Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said while standing in the hatch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, framed against Earth’s glowing horizon.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, whose agency helped fund Crew Dragon development roughly a decade ago but had limited involvement in the mission, hailed the achievement.
“Today’s success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and NASA’s long-term goal to build a vibrant US space economy,” he posted on X.
The sources: Polaris Program , SpaceX broadcast , Reuters , The New York Times
