SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn Mission Achieves Historic Spacewalk
Historic first private spacewalk accomplished by SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission on September 12, 2024 Comanded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, the voyage included two crew members, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, who each spent around twenty minutes outside the SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship.
The spacewalk, also known as extravehicular activity (EVA), began at 5:58 a.m. EDT and took almost two hours to finish.
The Polaris Dawn crew inside Dragon getting ready for the spacewalk pic.twitter.com/Xyz7GNvn6e
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 12, 2024
This historic event was a watershed point in commercial space exploration since it was the first time non-government astronauts had conducted an EVA.
How SpaceX’s New Space Suits Could Revolutionize Future Space Travel
The spacewalk’s main goal was to test SpaceX’s newly built EVA suits.
It will be very interesting to hear the crew’s full feedback on @SpaceX new EVA suit mobility – something that’s incredibly important, yet hard to achieve – especially fingertip fidelity. Elbow mobility looks great though.
Congrats @PolarisProgram team #PolarisDawn pic.twitter.com/VHd35FLhgb— Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) September 12, 2024
These suits, which were created particularly for the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, are likely to play an important role in future space missions, including possible expeditions to Mars.
Isaacman and Gillis experimented with many mobility aids and performed a set of movements during the EVA to evaluate their suitability.
The @PolarisProgram astronaut mission is headed for an altitude 3 times higher than the Space Station, the furthest that humans have been from Earth in over half a century! pic.twitter.com/lYgsA5vMGk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 10, 2024
Launched on September 10, 2024, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Polaris Dawn mission aims to increase the opportunities for commercial space travel.
Not only does the mission’s success show how good SpaceX is at technology, but it also opens the door for future business space trips.
This important historical spacewalk shows how business space travel has a lot of promise and how clever people are who push it forward.