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As part of the Polaris Dawn mission, astronauts Jared Isaacman and SpaceX's Anna Menon completed the first commercial spacewalk in spaceflight history earlier today. Isaacman and Menon took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier this week, after which they became the first crew to reach an altitude of 1,408 kilometers since the Gemini program and the farthest humans from space since NASA's Apollo Moon missions of the 1970s.
Before and since then, the astronauts were acclimatizing themselves to the harsh environment of space in order to prepare for today's spacewalk as part of what SpaceX calls a pre breathe protocol.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon Lets Private Astronauts Conduct First Spacewalk In Human History
Not only did the Polaris Dawn crew become the first private crew to conduct a spacewalk, but in the process, SpaceX's Crew Dragon also became the first privately developed and operated ship in history to have done so. Since the Crew Dragon has been designed primarily to send astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), the ship is not designed to operate in a vacuum. This means that if its forward hatch is opened, then the interior of the capsule becomes fully depressurized.
For the crew, this means that they can not simply open their spacecraft's forward hatch (the door on the top that in standard conditions lets astronauts board the ISS). Instead, they have to gradually acclimatize themselves to the vacuum of space. For Polaris Dawn, this meant that the four crew members had to start a pre breathing process to reduce nitrogen levels in their body and ensuring that the pressure surrounding them drops gradually.
At around 6:13 a.m. Eastern Time and roughly half an hour before the hatch opened, the spacewalk, also called an extravehicular activity (EVA), officially started. While intuitively, an EVA implies that the crew has to exit the ship, the formal definition is when the pressure inside the spacecraft has sufficiently been reduced to mimic the conditions in space. This meant that while Isaacman and Gillis, who train SpaceX's private astronauts, were the two astronauts who ventured outside the Crew Dragon, all four astronauts, in effect, participated in the EVA.
The hatch that saw the crew venture outside the spacecraft was different than the one NASA astronauts typically use for their ISS missions. Due to its profile, SpaceX made several upgrades to the Crew Dragon. Along with the ISS docking port on the ship being replaced with a ladder, the forward hatch was also motorized along with additional equipment for the mission's nitrogen and oxygen needs.
At roughly 6:44 a.m. Isaacman started to open the forward hatch. The hatch was finally opened at around 6:50 a.m. Eastern Time, which was followed by loud cheers from observers at SpaceX's headquarters. As he became the first private astronaut to venture out of a spacecraft into the vacuum of space, Isaacman marked the occasion by stating, "SpaceX, back at home, we have a lot of work to do. But from here, it sure looks like a perfect world."
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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