SpaceX Delivers First Private Astronaut Spacewalk
Space history happened yesterday when crew members of the Polaris Dawn mission pulled off the first civilian spacewalk. Billionaire Jared Isaacman exited to the cheers of the ground crew. He commanded and funded the mission, which is going to be executing a series of experiments on life in space.
SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis also walked outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule. Gillis oversees astronaut training at SpaceX, and is gaining experience to train future astronauts. The other two crew members remained inside but the hatch was open, so they were exposed to space conditions 435 miles above Earth.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule traveled further into space than any spacecraft has gone in more than 50 years since NASA’s Apollo era. The Dragon capsule also beat the height reached by NASA’s Gemini 11 in the 1960s.