The first private spacewalk in history began at 12:12 (Italian time). Millions of viewers followed it in live streaming. After the necessary preparations and checks, the coveted milestone was reached by two members of the Polaris Dawn crew , Commander Jared Isaacman and Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, while Mission Pilot Kidd Poteet and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon are monitoring the life support systems. SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft is now about 700 kilometers above Earth, 300 kilometers higher than the International Space Station.

Cabin pressure slowly dropped to a vacuum before the hatch opened, exposing the entire crew to the outer space environment. At that point, Polaris Dawn’s commander exited first, followed by Gillis. The two must perform a series of planned movements to test how joints move when the suit is pressurized, test the performance of an innovative display that appears on the lower left side of the helmet (a feature NASA’s suits lack), and better understand how air-cooled suits cope with the extreme temperatures of space.

Isaacman and Gillis will remain attached to Crew Dragon at all times via 12-foot cables that provide oxygen, power, and communications. The ultimate goal of this spacewalk is to test new SpaceX-designed pressure suits for future civilian astronauts to fly to the moon or Mars, to “learn as much as we can about this suit and give it back to the engineers,” says Isaacman, who is also the funder of the Polaris project.

(Online Union)

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