CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A daredevil billionaire shot back into orbit On Tuesday, it aims to conduct the first private spacewalk and travel further than anyone since NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon.
Unlike his previous charter flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaakman the costs shared with SpaceX This time we were busy developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they would hold up in the extreme vacuum.
If all goes according to plan, this will be the first time that civilians will conduct a spacewalk, but they will not be leaving the capsule. Spacewalks are considered one of the riskiest parts of space travel and have been routinely performed on the International Space Station since the former Soviet Union opened the hatch in 1965, the exclusive domain of professional astronauts, as reported by the US Today.
Isaacman, along with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for Wednesday night or Thursday, midway through the five-day flight.
But first, the passengers will go beyond the International Space Station: an altitude of 1,400 kilometers, which would break the record set by NASA in 1966 during Project Gemini. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have gone further.
The plan is to stay at that altitude — filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris — for 10 hours before shrinking the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles (700 kilometers), the orbit would dwarf the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts have ever flown.
All four wore SpaceX spaceswalking suits, as the entire Dragon capsule would be depressurized during the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the hazardous environment.
Isaacman and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly jumping out of the hatch. They’ll test out their custom-made suits with white and black trim by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or an attached support structure that resembles the top of a swimming pool ladder. There will be no dangling from the end of their 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers, and there will be no jetpack showboating. Only NASA’s space station suits are equipped with jetpacks, and only for emergencies.
Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX’s Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from the inside. Like previous SpaceX astronaut flights, it will end with a splashdown off the coast of Florida.
“We’re sending you hugs from the ground,” Launch Control radioed after the crew reached orbit. “May you make history and come home safely.”
Isaacman responded, “We wouldn’t have made this journey without you 14,000 people at SpaceX.”
At a pre-flight press conference, Isaacman — CEO and founder of credit card processing company Shift4 — declined to say how much he had invested in the flight. “Not a chance,” he said.
SpaceX partnered with Isaacman to pay for the spacesuit development and associated costs, said William Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president who once led space missions for NASA.
“We are really starting to push the boundaries of the private sector,” Gerstenmaier said.
It’s the first of three trips Isaacman purchased from Elon Musk 2 1/2 years ago, shortly after he returned from his first private SpaceX spaceflight in 2021. Isaacman funded that sightseeing trip for an undisclosed amount, taking contest winners and a childhood cancer survivor along the way. The trip raised hundreds of millions for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Development of the spacesuit took longer than expected, delaying this first so-called Polaris Dawn flight until now. The training was extensive; Poteet said it rivaled anything he had experienced during his Air Force flying career.
As astronaut trainers at SpaceX, Gillis and Menon helped Isaacman and his previous team, as well as NASA’s professional crews, prepare for their missions.
“I wasn’t alive when people walked on the moon. I would definitely love for my kids to see people walk on the moon and Mars and explore our solar system,” Isaacman, 41, said before the launch.
Bad weather caused a two-week delay. The crew needed not only favorable forecasts for the launch, but also for the landing days later. With limited supplies and no way to reach the space station, they had no choice but to wait until conditions improved.
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