SpaceX Polaris astronauts complete first spacewalk by private citizens (original) (raw)

Billionaire entrepreneur and adventurer Jared Isaacman performed the first spacewalk by a private citizen early Thursday in a giant leap for the growing commercial space industry, with a live broadcast that showed him popping his head and torso out of the hatch of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and performing a series of maneuvers near the capsule.

He was followed by Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX engineer who is part of the four-person, all-civilian crew and also floated outside the spacecraft while tethered and holding on to handrails.

The spacewalk was originally scheduled for 2:23 a.m. Eastern time Thursday but was pushed back to just before 7, when Isaacman exited the hatch. Isaacman and Gillis spent several minutes each outside the capsule as it flew below Australia, over New Zealand and then across the Pacific Ocean. The images of Isaacman and Gillis silhouetted more than 200 miles high against a dramatic backdrop of Earth will be added to the annals of space history at a time when companies such as SpaceX are authoring new chapters of exploration.

“It’s gorgeous,” Isaacman said of the view. “Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.”

In an exclusive interview after the spacewalk, Isaacman told The Washington Post that the spacewalk was “a massive effort from everyone to get to this moment. And we know it’s just one step on a much longer journey and we feel very proud to be a part of it.”

The spacewalk was intended to test SpaceX’s new spacesuit, which is designed to keep the astronauts safe in the vacuum of space, protecting them against radiation and extreme temperatures. SpaceX spent more than two years developing the sleek, form-fitting suit that aims to allow maximum mobility.

In the interview from space, Isaacman said the suit performed well. “Probably a good year was spent thinking that it would be an environment that was very, very hot that needed to be managed,” he said. “And we all were very cool. So it did its job.”

SpaceX will take the crew’s feedback, he said, and incorporate it into the next designs. “They’re going to make another version of the suit and then another version,” he said. “So, you know, in terms of the test, I think we’re bringing back some good data.”

The SpaceX mission, which won’t be completed successfully until the crew returns home safely as soon as Sunday, stands in stark contrast with the struggles of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. NASA recently announced it lacked confidence in Starliner, which suffered thruster problems and helium leaks during a test flight to deliver a pair of astronauts to the International Space Station, and ordered its crew to stay on the station until February, when SpaceX will transport them back to Earth. Starliner returned home without its crew last week, an embarrassment for Boeing.

Spacewalks are among the most dangerous activities astronauts perform, but they give them an unfiltered view of Earth from space. NASA astronaut Ed White, who became the first American to perform a spacewalk in 1965, joked that he wasn’t going to go back to the Gemini spacecraft because “this is fun.” When he did finally return, he called it “the saddest moment of my life.”

Gillis said she also felt she could have stayed outside the spacecraft longer. “Stepping out and seeing the cusp of the world is absolutely incredible,” she said. “It felt as if the time just slipped away. And by the time I got to the end of it, it was already time to come in. So I wish we had a maybe just a couple more minutes to see it and experience it and take it all in.”

Called Polaris Dawn, the mission is a milestone for the growing commercial space industry as it continues to erode government’s long-held monopoly on the field. The flight was commissioned by Isaacman, the founder of Shift4 Payments, and did not involve NASA. He has not said how much he paid for the flight.

Isaacman, Gillis and the two other crew members, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and fighter jet pilot, and Anna Menon, who serves as a SpaceX mission director and an astronaut communicator, lifted off in a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., early Tuesday for what is expected to be a five-day mission.

SpaceX depressurized the spacecraft before opening the hatch, exposing all four crew members to the vacuum of space. While they did not exit the spacecraft, Poteet and Menon also wore spacesuits because the capsule does not have an airlock. Isaacman then lifted himself through the circular hatch and was outside the vehicle for less than 10 minutes. During that time, he tested the suit’s mobility while holding special rails installed at the top of the spacecraft called “skywalker.” Gillis then took her turn, also testing the suit and taking in the views.

Not everything went perfectly, however. Isaacman had to manually open the hatch, but he said SpaceX had prepared him for that scenario. Gillis also had to manually push parts of the seal around the hatch back into position. “We drilled these scenarios dozens of times,” Isaacman said. “And it was just very natural when the opportunity came up to do it.”

Once they came back into the cabin, they closed the hatch and began to repressurize it with oxygen and nitrogen.

In addition to the spacewalk, the capsule flew higher than any human spaceflight mission since the last of the Apollo moon missions, in 1972. The crew reached an altitude of more than 870 miles, or more than three times that of the International Space Station, and orbited Earth six times at that height before flying back to a lower altitude for the spacewalk.

For the next couple of days, the crew will be focused on completing the many science experiments they have on board. “We’ve got a jam-packed schedule,” Poteet said in the interview. “We’re going further and faster and for longer durations in the future, and we need to research as much as possible to prepare our astronauts for the future.”

Any human spaceflight mission is risky, but raising and lowering the altitude of the spacecraft was especially so. Ground engineers had to carefully choreograph the trajectory to ensure the capsule didn’t run into satellites or space debris orbiting Earth.

“During this mission, Dragon will travel repeatedly through the orbital altitudes of over 10 thousand satellites and bits of space debris,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote on X. “No room for error in our calculations.”

Told by SpaceX mission control that they were soaring higher than any mission since Apollo, Isaacman referenced NASA’s Artemis program, a campaign to return astronauts to the lunar surface: “We all look forward to our friends at the Artemis program to take us to even greater heights.”

The Polaris Dawn mission is Isaacman’s second spaceflight. In 2021, he commissioned what was called the Inspiration4 flight, which flew another crew of private citizens in orbit for three days in SpaceX’s Dragon.

After Polaris Dawn, he is planning two more flights. In the first of those, he has proposed flying to the Hubble Space Telescope and raising its orbit to extend its life. Over time, the telescope has been pulled toward Earth by gravity and would eventually burn up in the atmosphere. Some at NASA, however, have balked at the idea of a privately funded mission going to a taxpayer-funded national asset.

Isaacman has said the third mission in the Polaris program would be the first crewed flight of Starship, SpaceX’s massive, next-generation rocket and spacecraft. NASA is investing about $4 billion into the development of the vehicle and intends to use it to land astronauts on the moon.