Billionaire and his crew who made first private spacewalk on Sunday (September 15) returned to Earth after a five-day spacewalking journey aboard SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn spacecraft. The spacecraft landed in the darkness before dawn near Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers, and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
They completed the first private spacewalk in orbit 460 miles (740 kilometers) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope. After launching on Tuesday, their spacecraft reached a maximum altitude of 875 miles (1408 kilometers).
Isaacman became the 264th person to spacewalk since the Soviet Union’s first spacewalk in 1965, with SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis being the 265th. Prior to this, all spacewalks were conducted by professional astronauts.
As the spacecraft floated on the water, waiting for the recovery team, Isaacman radioed, “Our mission is complete.” Less than an hour later, all four emerged from the spacecraft. They appeared on the deck, happily fist-pumping.
During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon spacecraft’s hatch was open for less than half an hour. Isaacman only partially emerged, briefly testing SpaceX’s new space suit. Gillis followed, stretching her arms and legs for a few minutes, showing only her knees.
The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, much shorter than spacewalks at the International Space Station. Most of the time was spent depressurizing the entire spacecraft and then restoring the air inside. Even SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet wore space suits.
SpaceX views this brief exercise as a starting point to test space suit technology for longer Mars missions in the future.
This is Isaacman’s second collaboration with SpaceX for a chartered flight, and in his personally-funded Arctic Star-named space exploration program, he will conduct two more chartered flights. He paid an undisclosed amount for the first spaceflight in 2021.
In the recent “Polaris Dawn” mission, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments collaborated with SpaceX to cover the costs. Isaacman did not disclose how much money he spent.