SpaceX conducts historic first spacewalk with Polaris Dawn crew

SpaceX conducted its first spacewalk in the early hours of Thursday morning – a historic first for a company.

The highlight of the private Polaris Dawn mission went off without a hitch. Two of the crew members – Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis – exited SpaceX’s Dragon capsule “Resilience”. It is the first time that civilians, not government astronauts, have undertaken a spacewalk.

“We all still have a lot of work to do at home, but from here, Earth really looks like a perfect world,” said Isaacman, the mission’s sponsor and commander, after stepping out of the spacecraft.

SpaceX views the spacewalk, also called extravehicular activity (EVA), as a critical milestone in its goal of sending humans to other planets.

SpaceX has spent more than two years developing suits that can protect astronauts in the harsh environment of space, in conjunction with the Polaris program led by Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payments company Shift4. The mission is also the first to include company employees, represented by mission specialist Gillis and medical officer Anna Menon.

The Polaris Dawn event lasted about two hours in total. After the spacecraft hatch opened, the entire four-person crew was exposed to the vacuum of space. Isaacman and Gillis each spent about seven minutes outside the capsule, focusing on testing the maneuverability of the spacesuits.

SpaceX launched the mission on Tuesday. In addition to the spacewalk, Polaris Dawn reached an orbit more than 870 miles from Earth – the farthest distance humans have traveled in space since the Apollo program – and is conducting about 40 scientific and research experiments and raising funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Isaacman, who first traveled into space in 2021 as leader of the Inspiration4 mission, leads the Polaris program with the goal of pushing the boundaries of private space travel.

“That’s the inspiring side of it … anything that’s different than what we’ve seen in the last 20 or 30 years excites people and makes them think, ‘If this is what I see today, I wonder what it will look like tomorrow or a year from now,'” Isaacman told CNBC ahead of the mission.