Polaris Dawn crew members completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk on Thursday. The roughly two-hour mission outside their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, “Resilience,” marked a new phase of private spaceflight.
The historic extravehicular activity (EVA) began at approximately 6:15 a.m. ET and lasted almost two hours. Commander Jared Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis took turns exiting the capsule for about 20 minutes as the spacecraft orbited above Earth. During the process, the pair tested the capabilities and resilience of SpaceX’s new EVA astronaut suits.
Commander @rookisaacman has egressed Dragon and is going through the first of three suit mobility tests that will test overall hand body control, vertical movement with Skywalker, and foot restraint pic.twitter.com/XATJQhLuIZ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 12, 2024
While fellow crew members – mission specialist Anna Menon and retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet – remained in Resilience throughout the spacewalk. The Dragon capsule was not designed with an airlock, so both Menon and Poteet also wore EVA suits and were strapped to their seats in the unpressurized cabin.
The Polaris Dawn mission also had notable moments, even before Isaacman and Gillis’s excursion early Thursday morning. On September 10, the crew capsule reached a mission apogee of approximately 800 miles (1,300 kilometers), making it the furthest human capsule to travel into space since NASA’s Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972, and the highest orbit for any crew since the Gemini 11 mission. 1966. The journey also makes Menon and Gillis the first women to ever travel so far into space.
According to SpaceXthe remainder of the Polaris Dawn crew’s time in orbit will be spent testing a Starlink satellite laser communications array, and participating in 36 different studies and experiments from 31 partner institutions “designed to enhance both human health on Earth as well as during long-term space flight.”
[Related: How does Polaris Dawn fit into the history of spacewalks?.]
To reach that last point, however, all four travelers must exert significant pressure on their own bodies. Most of Polaris Dawn’s mission will take place at orbital altitudes beyond the Van Allen Belt, a region where charged particles are captured by the planet’s magnetosphere. This means that the crew will receive radiation doses equal to the amount of radiation they would normally absorb on Earth, but in just six days. The data collected during this exposure could help SpaceX and NASA experts better understand the long-term effects of spaceflight on humans, ahead of potentially extended stays on the moon and Mars.
This is a development story….