Billionaire entrepreneur and adventurer Jared Isaacman is expected to perform the first spacewalk by a private citizen early Thursday, with a live broadcast that will show him popping his head out of the hatch of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and performing a series of maneuvers near the capsule.
He is expected to be followed by Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX engineer who is part of the four-person, all-civilian crew and is also scheduled to float outside the spacecraft while tethered and holding on to handrails.
The spacewalk was originally scheduled for 2:23 a.m. Eastern time Thursday but was pushed back to 5:58 a.m. SpaceX has said that if necessary, there is a backup time Friday morning, as well. Isaacman and Gillis are expected to spend about 15 minutes each outside the capsule.
The historic spacewalk is intended to test SpaceX’s new spacesuit, which is designed to keep the astronauts safe in the vacuum of space, protecting them against radiation and extreme temperatures. SpaceX spent more than two years developing the sleek, form-fitting suit that aims to allow maximum mobility.
Spacewalks are among the most dangerous activities astronauts perform, but they give them an unfiltered view of Earth from space. NASA astronaut Ed White, who became the first American to perform a spacewalk in 1965, joked that he wasn’t going to go back to the Gemini spacecraft because “this is fun.” When he did finally return, he called it “the saddest moment of my life.”
Called Polaris Dawn, the mission is a milestone for the growing commercial space industry as it continues to erode government’s long-held monopoly on the field. The flight was commissioned by Isaacman, the founder of Shift4 Payments, and did not involve NASA. He has not said how much he paid for the flight.
Isaacman, Gillis and the two other crew members, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and fighter jet pilot, and Anna Menon, who serves as a SpaceX mission director and an astronaut communicator, lifted off in a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral early Tuesday in what is expected to be a five-day mission.
SpaceX was scheduled to start depressurizing the spacecraft before opening the hatch, exposing all four crewmembers to the vacuum of space. While they were not expected to exit the spacecraft, Poteet and Menon would also put on spacesuits because the capsule does not have an airlock.
In addition to the spacewalk, the capsule flew higher than any human spaceflight mission since the last of the Apollo moon missions, in 1972. The crew reached an altitude of more than 870 miles, or more than three times that of the International Space Station, and orbited Earth six times at that height before flying back to a lower altitude for the spacewalk.
Any human spaceflight mission is risky, but raising and lowering the altitude of the spacecraft was especially so. Ground engineers had to carefully choreograph the trajectory to ensure the capsule didn’t run into satellites or space debris orbiting Earth.
“During this mission, Dragon will travel repeatedly through the orbital altitudes of over 10 thousand satellites and bits of space debris,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote on X. “No room for error in our calculations.”
Told by SpaceX mission control that they were soaring higher than any mission since Apollo, Isaacman referenced NASA’s Artemis program, a campaign to return astronauts to the lunar surface: “We all look forward to our friends at the Artemis program to take us to even greater heights.”
The Polaris Dawn mission is Isaacman’s second spaceflight. In 2021, he commissioned what was called the Inspiration4 flight, which flew another crew of private citizens in orbit for three days in SpaceX’s Dragon.
After Polaris Dawn, he is planning two more flights. In the first of those, he has proposed flying to the Hubble Space Telescope and raising its orbit to extend its life. Over time, the telescope has been pulled toward Earth by gravity and would eventually burn up in the atmosphere. Some at NASA, however, have balked at the idea of a privately funded mission going to a taxpayer-funded national asset.
Isaacman has said the third mission in the Polaris program would be the first crewed flight of Starship, SpaceX’s massive, next-generation rocket and spacecraft. NASA is investing about $4 billion into the development of the vehicle and intends to use it to land astronauts on the moon.