Astronauts Achieve First-Ever Private Spacewalk on Polaris Dawn Mission

Early this morning, Jared Isaacman, commander of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission, turned a hand crank to open the top hatch of a Crew Dragon capsule, then slowly emerged into space—460 miles above the surface of the Earth.

Cheering erupted on SpaceX’s livestream of the mission, because Isaacman is very different from the roughly 260 astronauts who have ever completed spacewalks before him. Isaacman is not a professional astronaut on a government mission—he’s a tech billionaire—and the feat achieved by him and his crew marks the first-ever private spacewalk.

“Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, it sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said, as the livestream captured his figure poking out of the hatch, silhouetted by our planet.

Polaris Dawn, the first of three flights in the Polaris private spaceflight program, is a collaboration between Isaacman, who is CEO of payment processor Shift4, and SpaceX with the aim of testing SpaceX’s new spacesuits and accelerating research pertaining to a future mission to Mars.

Once he emerged from the hatch, Isaacman conducted “a series of tests designed to evaluate the suit’s mobility, thermal systems and the Dragon mobility aid,” per a SpaceX statement, stretching one arm and then the other. After around ten minutes in space, he climbed back into the capsule to make room for SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, who then went through the same process.

First Commercial Spacewalk - Polaris Dawn Performs EVA with SpaceX Dragon

Watch on

The hatch was open for just a half hour, making the spacewalk “simple and quick,” per the Associated Press’ Marcia Dunn, especially in comparison to spacewalks conducted by NASA astronauts at the International Space Station, which can last up to eight hours. In fact, the endeavor was perhaps more of a space-stand than a walk—Isaacman and Gillis held onto the railings affixed to the hatch with a hand or foot the entire time.

Their spacesuits wouldn’t have allowed for an untethered spacewalk anyway, because only NASA suits are geared with the necessary jetpacks to propel astronauts back to the capsule, report the New York Post’s Ronny Reyes and Emily Crane. But in a press conference before the mission, Isaacman suggested that future astronauts on Mars might one day don advanced versions of the suits the Polaris Dawn crew were wearing.

“A huge honor to have that opportunity to test it out on this flight,” he said, per the New York Times’ Kenneth Chang.

Though only Isaacman and Gillis conducted a spacewalk, the entire crew—which includes mission pilot Scott Poteet and medical officer Anna Menon—had to wear spacesuits during the extravehicular activity, because the Dragon spacecraft doesn’t have an airlock. As a result, the entire capsule had to be depressurized and open to the vacuum of space during the spacewalk. A similar procedure was also followed for the first U.S. spacewalk in 1965.

When Isaacman opened the hatch, it also marked the first time that four astronauts were in space simultaneously. But the mission’s “firsts” don’t end there—at its peak distance of 870 miles from Earth, the Dragon’s crew were the farthest from our planet that any human has been since NASA’s Apollo moon missions. So it’s significant that the Falcon 9 rocket that launched them into space earlier this week lifted off from the same launch pad as Apollo 11, per Space.com’s Brett Tingley. As if that wasn’t enough, this mission marked the first time in space for Poteet, Gillis and Menon.

“Congratulations Polaris Program and SpaceX on the first commercial spacewalk in history! Today’s success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and NASA’s long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote on X, although NASA was minimally involved in the mission.

Polaris Dawn, which is also conducting other tests including a new laser communications system, is scheduled to return the crew to Earth this weekend.

Margherita Bassi | READ MORE

Margherita Bassi is a trilingual storyteller and freelance journalist with a particular interest in ancient history, astronomy and human interest stories.