Billionaire Jared Issacman and engineer Sarah Gillis have become the first non-professional crew to perform one of the riskiest manoeuvres in space – a spacewalk.
The term “spacewalk” means to “walk” in space, drifting in orbit while tethered to a spacecraft.
This excursion was commercially funded by Mr Isaacman. Previously, only astronauts with government-funded space agencies had done a spacewalk.
Isaacman and Gillis stepped out of the SpaceX spacecraft around 15 minutes apart, starting at 11:52BST, wearing specially-designed suits.
Images broadcast live showed the two crew emerge from the white Dragon capsule to float 435 miles (700km) above the blue Earth below.
Mr Isaacman emerged first, wiggling his limbs, hands and feet to test his suit. He returned back inside the hatch, and Ms Gillis, who works for SpaceX, then climbed out. Both crew narrated their spacewalk, describing how their suits performed outside of the craft. “Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Mr Isaacman said as he exited.
The Dragon capsule the team flew in has now launched to space three times, taking 11 crew in total. However, the capsule and the spacesuits are not subject to regulation and were untested in this environment.
Government space agencies like Nasa want the private sector to transport their astronauts on missions and bring down the cost of space travel. Entrepreneurs like Isaacman and Elon Musk want to expand private space travel so that more non-professional astronauts can go to space. While this is a major symbolic step forwards, that day is probably a long way off as the costs remain prohibitively high.
Source: BBC News
