SpaceX performs historic first spacewalk with Polaris Dawn crew

SpaceX pulled off its first spacewalk in the early hours of Thursday morning, in a historic first for a company.

The marquee event of the private Polaris Dawn mission went smoothly, with two of the crew members — Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis — stepping outside of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule “Resilience.” It’s the first time civilians, rather than government astronauts, have performed a spacewalk.

“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman, the mission’s benefactor and commander, said after emerging from the spacecraft.

SpaceX sees the spacewalk, otherwise known as extravehicular activity, or EVA, as a crucial milestone in its goal of sending people to other planets.

SpaceX spent more than two years developing suits that can protect astronauts while in the harsh environment of space alongside the Polaris Program run by Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payments company Shift4. The mission is also the first to fly employees of the company, represented by mission specialist Gillis and medical officer Anna Menon.

The Polaris Dawn event took about two hours in total, with the full crew of four exposed to the vacuum of space after the spacecraft’s hatch opened. Isaacman and Gillis spent about seven minutes each outside the capsule, with a focus on testing the mobility of the spacesuits.

SpaceX launched the mission Tuesday. In addition to the spacewalk, Polaris Dawn reached an orbit of more than 1,400 kilometers from Earth — the furthest humans have traveled in space since the Apollo program — and is performing about 40 science and research experiments, as well as raising funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Isaacman, who first traveled to space leading the Inspiration4 mission in 2021, said he is leading the Polaris Program in an effort to push the boundaries of private spaceflight.

“This is the inspiration side of it … anything that’s different than what we’ve seen over the last 20 or 30 years is what gets people excited, thinking: ‘Well if this is what I’m seeing today, I wonder what tomorrow’s gonna look like or a year after,'” Isaacman told CNBC before the mission.