A billionaire and an engineer made history as the first non-professional astronauts to perform one of the riskiest maneuvers in space—a spacewalk.
Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis exited the SpaceX spacecraft in specially tailored suits, with their departures spaced about 15 minutes apart, beginning at 11:52 BST.
“Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Mr. Isaacman said as he exited.
This privately funded endeavor by Isaacman marks a first; previously, only astronauts from government-backed space agencies had undertaken spacewalks.
Live broadcasts depicted the pair floating out from the white Dragon capsule, hovering 435 miles above Earth’s surface.
Isaacman was the first to emerge, testing the mobility of his suit by moving his arms and legs. Following his re-entry, Ms. Gillis, an employee at SpaceX, made her exit.
During their spacewalk, both crew members provided commentary on the performance of their suits outside the spacecraft.
Originally planned for 07:23 BST, the spacewalk was rescheduled to early Thursday morning.
As the crew readied to open the hatch, which lacks a traditional airlock, the anticipation and tension heightened.
To avoid decompression sickness, the four crew members underwent two days of pre-breathing, a process that replaces nitrogen in the bloodstream with oxygen.
Subsequently, the spacecraft was depressurized to align with the vacuum conditions of space.
Dr. Simeon Barber, a research scientist at the Open University, explained that this spacewalk employed a markedly different method compared to those from the International Space Station.
In contrast to the typical use of an airlock in recent decades, the SpaceX Dragon capsule exposed the entire craft directly to the vacuum of space.
“It’s really exciting, and I think it shows again that SpaceX is not afraid to do things in a different way,” Dr. Barber commented to BBC News. Nevertheless, the venture was not devoid of significant risks.
Isaacman, who financed the Polaris Dawn mission, was the only one among the four-person crew with prior space experience.
He commands the Resilience spacecraft alongside Scott ‘Kidd’ Poteet, a retired air force pilot, and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
The Dragon capsule, now on its third space journey, has transported 11 crew members in total but remains unregulated and untested in this context.
Executing a spacewalk is notoriously difficult, making this successful operation by a private company a significant milestone in space exploration.
This particular walk, at an altitude of 435 miles, set a new record for height and utilized cutting-edge technology in the newly developed extravehicular activity (EVA) suits.
These EVA suits, an advancement from previous intravehicular activity (IVA) suits, feature a helmet-integrated heads-up display that provides real-time data.
Sarah Gillis relayed information from her display while outside the capsule.
SpaceX asserts that these suits, designed for both comfort and flexibility, are suitable for use during both launch and landing, eliminating the need for separate IVA suits.
Additional nitrogen and oxygen tanks were installed, and all four astronauts donned the suits, setting a new record for the most individuals in space simultaneously.
The Resilience spacecraft left Earth on a SpaceX rocket on Tuesday. The mission aimed to reach up to 870 miles in orbit, further than any human since NASA’s Apollo program concluded in the 1970s.
NASA and other government space agencies are encouraging the private sector to lower the cost of space travel by transporting astronauts.
Entrepreneurs like Isaacman and Elon Musk are pushing for expanded private space travel to allow more non-professional astronauts to explore space.
While this represents a significant symbolic achievement, widespread private space travel remains a distant goal due to high costs.
