SpaceX Polaris astronauts perform first private spacewalk: NPR

Jared Isaacman hovers just below the hatch of his SpaceX Dragon capsule as he waits for his first private spacewalk.

SpaceX broadcast/Screenshot from NPR

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SpaceX broadcast/Screenshot from NPR

An internet entrepreneur and a SpaceX engineer are on track to become the first private astronauts in space.

Jared Isaacman, who amassed a fortune with his online payments company Shift4, has funded the mission, called Polaris Dawn. He will spend a few minutes outside his SpaceX Dragon capsule looking down at Earth, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis.

The mission’s other two astronauts, Scott Poteet, a former Air Force pilot who works for Isaacman, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, will remain in the capsule to support the astronauts.

Until now, spacewalks have been the sole domain of professional astronauts. Spacewalks are regularly conducted outside the International Space Station to perform essential maintenance and experiments, for example. These spacewalks can last several hours and usually follow a grueling schedule that leaves little time to enjoy the view.

In many ways, today’s spacewalk is a return to the earliest days of the space program. SpaceX’s new spacesuits look modern, but they don’t have autonomous life support. The astronauts will receive oxygen via umbilicals, similar to the spacewalks of the Gemini missions in the 1960s. Isaacman and Gillis won’t fly far. They’ll swing just outside the hatch, holding onto a special set of tracks that SpaceX has dubbed “Skywalker.”

Spacewalks are one of the riskiest aspects of space travel. Spacesuits are essentially tiny spaceships. They must provide life support and temperature control for astronauts, who are exposed to enormous temperature fluctuations in the vacuum of space. Problems during spacewalks are not uncommon and can be serious – in 2013, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned in space after water from his suit’s cooling system got into his helmet.

If the spacewalk is successful, it would be a major milestone for SpaceX. Spacesuits are an essential part of space travel, and the company hopes they can one day be used for trips to the Moon and Mars.