A group of private astronauts is set to make history on Thursday with the first private spacewalk in orbit, launching from a SpaceX capsule as part of the ambitious Polaris Dawn mission.
The crew, which includes a billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot, and two SpaceX employees, has been orbiting Earth aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon since their early morning launch from Florida on Tuesday. This mission is another bold step in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight.
The spacewalk, scheduled for 2:23 a.m. ET (0623 GMT), will take place at an altitude of 700 km (435 miles) above Earth. Two astronauts will venture outside the Crew Dragon while the other two remain inside. In a unique maneuver, the entire capsule will be depressurized, forcing the crew to rely on the slimmed-down, SpaceX-developed spacesuits for oxygen.
Jared Isaacman, the 41-year-old founder of electronic payments company Shift4, is funding the Polaris Dawn mission, similar to how he bankrolled the Inspiration4 mission in 2021.
Though Isaacman has not disclosed the exact cost, the mission likely runs into hundreds of millions of dollars, considering SpaceX charges roughly $55 million per seat for Crew Dragon missions.
The Polaris crew consists of mission pilot Scott Poteet, a 50-year-old retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and two SpaceX engineers—Sarah Gillis, 30, and Anna Menon, 38. Isaacman and Gillis will conduct the spacewalk, tethered to the spacecraft by oxygen lines, while Poteet and Menon remain inside the capsule.
This spacewalk marks a significant milestone, as historically, only government astronauts with years of specialized training have carried out spacewalks.
Since 2000, around 270 spacewalks have taken place aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and 16 have been completed by Chinese astronauts on the Tiangong space station.
The U.S.’s first spacewalk was in 1965 during the Gemini mission, using a depressurization process similar to the one planned for Polaris Dawn.
Throughout the Polaris Dawn mission, the astronauts will participate in scientific research, focusing on how the human body responds to deep space environments. This research will build on decades of studies conducted by government astronauts aboard the ISS.
Crew Dragon has proven itself as a reliable vehicle for ferrying astronauts to orbit and back to Earth since 2021, having completed over a dozen missions, primarily for NASA.
SpaceX’s development of Crew Dragon was part of a NASA initiative to encourage private companies to build U.S. spacecraft for transporting astronauts to and from the ISS.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule was developed alongside Crew Dragon but has faced delays, most recently during a test mission in June that ended with the capsule returning empty while its crew remained on the ISS, awaiting retrieval by Crew Dragon next year.