Billionaire makes the first-ever commercial spacewalk
Kyiv • UNN
September 12 2024, 03:29 PM • 4290 views
Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis made the first private spacewalk at an altitude of 740 km. They tested their spacesuits in extreme conditions during the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission.
Participants of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission may make history as they made the first commercial spacewalk at a distance of more than 700 kilometers from Earth. Written by UNN with reference to El Mundo.
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Billionaire Jared Isaacson and engineer Sarah Gillis have made the first-ever private spacewalk. This afternoon, the 41-year-old pilot and philanthropist, founder of Shift4, an online payment processing company, opened the hatch while the Dragon spacecraft was traveling at more than 25,000 kilometers per hour, 740 kilometers from Earth. This was the most difficult moment of the Polaris Dawn mission, the riskiest in SpaceX's history, the publication points out.
I know we have a lot of work to do at home, but from here the Earth looks like a perfect world
Unlike previous astronaut spacewalks, Isaacson and Gillis did not leave the capsule completely. They performed physical exercises to test how their spacesuit withstood the harsh conditions of space.
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Until now, only professional astronauts have gone into space. Ahead of Isaacson's plans, many experts and space specialists doubted in advance whether the mission would be safe enough, as SpaceX has different safety requirements than, for example, NASA or ESA.