About 10 minutes hanging on the capsule and attached to the spacecraft, “Witnessing sunrise and sunset every 106 minutes…Our Earth is beautiful,” SpaceX engineer Sara Gillis, on board the SpaceX spacecraft Dragon, began spacewalking for the first time as a civilian in space.
On the 11th (local time), SpaceX announcers reported during a live webcast that at 10:12 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (7:12 p.m. Korean time), the official Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) began with the supply of oxygen to the spacesuit.
The SpaceX crew posted on social media X (formerly Twitter) that “Dragon’s first spacewalk has begun!”
The SpaceX spacecraft Crew Dragon was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:23 a.m. the previous day (6:23 p.m. Korean time). The spacecraft, carried by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, entered the planned orbit a little over 10 minutes after launch.
The Crew Dragon orbited in an elliptical orbit ranging from up to 120 miles (about 193 km) to a maximum of 430 miles (about 692 km) above the Earth’s surface. Both Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sara Gillis took turns spacewalking for about 10-20 minutes each attached to the capsule, unlike past NASA astronauts who floated in space tied to a line.
They are individuals who attempted their first spacewalk as civilians, not professional astronauts.
Another SpaceX engineer, Anna Menon, and retired U.S. Air Force pilot Scott Forte remained inside the capsule monitoring oxygen, and power supply.
Menon mentioned in a message sent to Earth that one can see sunrise and sunset every 106 minutes inside the spacecraft. She expressed, “This is one of my favorite sceneries,” and said, “Seeing it every hour is truly beautiful. Our Earth is really beautiful.”
All four individuals reportedly received more than two years of training for this spacewalk, which included skydiving, centrifuge training, scuba diving, and climbing volcanic peaks.
The spacecraft is expected to stay in space for about 5 days before returning to Earth.
The goal of this spacewalk is to test the new spacesuit developed by SpaceX. Isaacman explained, “The goal is to learn as much as possible about this suit and provide information to engineers for future suit design evolution.”
This mission of the spacecraft is called “Polaris Dawn,” meaning the dawn of the North Pole. The cost of entering the space flight (mission) of Polaris Dawn is reportedly shared equally between billionaire Isaacman and SpaceX. Isaacman is said to have invested 200 million dollars (approximately 268.5 billion won).
Former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe evaluated it as “another milestone toward commercializing transportation to space.”