A pioneering private team made history on Thursday by carrying out the first commercial spacewalk, in what NASA called a “huge leap” for the space industry.
The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, led by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, will travel deeper into the universe than any human has done in the half century since the Apollo era.
Pure oxygen began flowing into the four-member crew’s suits on Thursday as the Dragon spacecraft adjusted to an orbit of 434 miles (700 kilometers), marking the official start of their extravehicular activity (EVA) at 1012 GMT.
After some time, Isaacman opened the door and climbed into a structure called “Skywalker” by holding its arms and legs, and an amazing view of the Earth appeared below him.
“SpaceX, all of us at home have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth certainly looks like a perfect world,” he told mission control in Hawthorne, California, where the teams greeted him with applause.
It was another major milestone for SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk in 2002.
Since then, SpaceX has grown into a powerhouse, beating out aerospace giant Boeing in supplying spacecraft to ferry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in 2020.
“Today’s success is a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry, and reflects NASA’s long-term goal of building a vibrant American space economy,” NASA chief Bill Nelson wrote on X.
Suite Testing
Before opening the hatch, the crew went through a “prebreather” procedure to remove nitrogen from their bloodstream, preventing decompression sickness. Then the cabin pressure was gradually reduced to align with the vacuum of space.
Isaacman and his fellow SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis spent a few minutes taking turns outside the vehicle performing mobility tests on SpaceX’s next-generation suit, which includes a head-up display, helmet camera and advanced joint mobility system — and then they returned inside.
External vehicle activities officially ended one hour and 46 minutes later, after the cabin was re-pressurized.
Although a first for the commercial sector, the spacewalk was inferior to the adventures of the early space age.
Early astronauts, including the first Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in 1965, flew tethered to their spacecraft, while a select few Space Shuttle astronauts used jetpacks to fly completely untethered.
Since Dragon does not have an airlock, the entire crew was exposed to the vacuum of space. Mission pilot Scott Poteat and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon remained strapped in and monitored vital support systems throughout the flight.
“The risk is certainly greater than zero, and it’s certainly greater than anything done on a commercial basis,” former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe told AFP.
First of three Polaris missions
The spacewalk followed a bold first phase of the mission, during which the Dragon spacecraft reached an altitude of 870 miles — three times higher than the International Space Station, and rife with dangerous, high-energy particles.
The four trained for more than two years to prepare for this historic mission, including hundreds of hours in simulators, as well as training in skydiving, scuba diving and climbing a volcano in Ecuador.
Upcoming tasks include testing laser-based satellite communications between the spacecraft and the massive Starlink satellite constellation, and completing dozens of experiments, including tests on contact lenses with embedded microelectronics to monitor changes in eye pressure and shape in space.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions under the Polaris program, the result of a collaboration between Isaacman and SpaceX.
Financial terms of the partnership are still confidential, but Isaacman, the 41-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4Payments, has reportedly committed $200 million of his wealth to lead the 2021 all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration4 orbital mission.
The final Polaris mission is aimed at the first manned flight of SpaceX’s Starship, a prototype next-generation rocket that is key to founder Musk’s ambitions of colonizing Mars.
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