Polaris Dawn astronauts successfully complete first private spacewalk

Polaris Dawn astronauts successfully complete first private spacewalk

News update

Sara Guillis and Jared Isaacman have become the first two people to perform a spacewalk on a commercial mission. Both astronauts left the interior of the Dragon of SpaceXin two shifts, to carry out a series of mobility tests on the new spacesuits designed by SpaceX.

Isaacman, the mission’s commander and financier, went into space a few minutes before 1:00 p.m. in Spain. After opening the hatch manually, he emerged part of your body to the outside and performed mobility tests while remaining attached with one hand to a support on the outside of the ship“SpaceX, we have a lot of work to do back home, but from here it looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said during the walk. The astronaut remained in space for 13 minutes before going back inside and making way for Guillis. His walk, during which he performed the same mobility tests, was somewhat shorter, 8 minutes.

Issacman and Guillis were not the only ones to feel the vacuum of space, their companions Scott Poteet and Anna Menon also felt it. The ship lacks a separate compartment for space exits, so the entire capsule was depressurized so that the walk could take place. Poteet and Menon did not get out, but They also experienced the vacuum of space.

The spacewalk was a success that adds to the success achieved yesterday by reaching the highest orbit in history, 1,400.7 kilometersOnly the astronauts of the Apollo missions, half a century ago, have traveled further from Earth than they have.

Original news

We have been following the mission of the SpaceX rocket, Elon Musk’s company, for over a week, which will carry out a milestone in human space flights: the first private spacewalk. The mission is part of the Polaris Dawn space program, led by billionaire Jared Isaacman. And the objective, EVA (extravehicular space activity in English), It is already approved and is imminent.

One of the purposes of the mission is to test a new generation of spacesuits that SpaceX says will be needed to colonize the Moon and Mars. The suits have been in development for several years and are designed to withstand the rigors of spaceThe walk is scheduled to take place on the third day of the mission.

The latest message we have, posted on Polaris’ social media, is that “SpaceX is ready for EVA operations,” as are all of its members.

The four members of Isaacman’s crew, Scott Poteet, Sara Gillis and Anna Menon, did not get there by dint of a penny.

While it is true that Isaacman is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar firm, He is also a pilot and astronaut with over 7,000 hours of aviation flight time, including qualifications in multiple experimental aircraft. and former military personnel. He was the commander of Inspiration4, the world’s first all-civilian space mission. He also holds several world records, including two around-the-world speed flights in 2008 and 2009. In 2011, Isaacman co-founded what would become the world’s largest private air force, Draken International, to train pilots for the United States Armed Forces.

Poteet is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who served for 20 years in various capacities, with more than 3,200 flight hours in the F-16, A-4, T-38, T-37, T-3 and Alpha Jet.

Sarah Gillis is a principal space operations engineer at SpaceX and is responsible for overseeing the company’s astronaut training program. This includes the development of a mission-specific curriculum and training execution for both NASA astronauts as well as the commercials that fly aboard the Dragon spacecraft. He prepared NASA astronauts for the early Demo-2 and Crew-1 missions, and most recently directly trained astronauts for Inspiration4, the first all-civilian crew to go into orbit.

Finally, Anna Menon is also a Principal Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, where she manages the development of crew operations and serves on Mission control as mission director and crew communicatorDuring her tenure at SpaceX, she led the implementation of Dragon’s crew capabilities, helped create the crew communications operator role, and developed critical operational responses to vehicle emergencies such as fires or cabin depressurization. Menon worked for seven years at NASA as a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station.