SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn makes history with first private spacewalk
Al Jazeera
A pioneering duo of astronauts has made history by becoming the first private civilians to perform a spacewalk, hailed by NASA as “a giant leap forward” for the commercial space industry.
The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, led by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, launched early Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, journeying deeper into the cosmos than any human in half a century, since the Apollo programme in the 1970s.
With the four-member crew’s Dragon spacecraft orbiting at an altitude of 700 kilometres (434 miles), pure oxygen began flowing into their suits Thursday morning, marking the official start of their walk in space, dubbed an “extravehicular activity”.
A short time later, Isaacman swung open the hatch and climbed through, gripping the hand and footholds of a structure known as “Skywalker”, as a breathtaking view of Earth unfolded below him.
“It’s gorgeous,” he told mission control in California, where teams cheered at important checkpoints.
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