Billionaire Jared Isaacman makes history with first ever private spacewalk: ‘From here Earth sure looks like a perfect world’

The Polaris Dawn mission continues to make commercial spaceflight history: after breaking the orbital altitude record on Wednesday, it has now completed the first private spacewalk. It was the first time that two commercial astronauts — who do not belong to a government space agency, such as NASA — have ever achieved this feat.

The spacewalk was carried out by tech magnate Jared Isaacman and aerospace engineer Sarah Gillis. At 11:58 a.m. EDT, the mission began performing the final checks before opening the hatch of Resilience, a Crew Dragon spacecraft that SpaceX has adapted for this innovative five-day spaceflight, which lifted off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

At 12:13 a.m., mission control in Earth gave the go-ahead and the order to begin the operation, which went into action after just over 35 minutes, when the spacesuits were filled with air and the capsule was depressurized. Since this space capsule does not have a compartment that functions as an airlock, when billionaire Isaacman and Gillis manually opened the hatch, the four-person crew — dressed in SpaceX’s new spacesuits — felt what it was like to be in open space.

After 12:50 p.m., Isaacman emerged from the spacecraft and began testing the movement of the spacesuit: “SpaceX, back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” said Isaacman, prompting celebratory applause from the mission control at Elon Musk’s company’s facilities.

After floating partially in space, while holding on to one of the hand holds of the Skywalker device mounted on the hatch of the spacecraft, Isaacman returned to Resilience. Then it was Gillis’ turn. The SpaceX astronaut performed exactly the same spacesuit mobility checks before re-entering the spacecraft and closing the hatch.

Gillis and Isaacman have joined a select group of people who have walked in space, a club that until now was reserved for astronauts from NASA, ESA and the Russian, Canadian, Chinese and Japanese space agencies. More than 250 people have done spacewalks so far.

This is the second space mission to be carried out by Jared Isaacman, a 41-year-old technology magnate who is also an airline pilot and commercial astronaut. In 2021, Isaacman also financed and served as mission commander on Inspiration4, SpaceX’s first orbital mission with a civilian-only crew. Gillis, 30, is an aerospace engineer at Elon Musk’s company, where she is responsible for the astronaut training program and also has extensive ground-based experience in space mission control. This is her first space flight. She made history on Wednesday with her mission partner Anna Menon when they became the women who have flown the farthest from Earth.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition