WASHINGTON – According to SpaceX on Friday the crew of US Polaris Dawn mission have completed a spacewalk marked the first time commercial astronauts have space-walked from a commercial spacecraft.
According to NASA, the spacewalk started at around 6:13 a.m. Eastern Time (1013 GMT). Two astronauts of the four-member all-civilian crew wore the SpaceX-newly-designed extravehicular activity suits for the spacewalk.
Two astronauts are American billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, media reported.
Isaacman and Gillis each spent several minutes outside the capsule. The spacewalk ended at about 7:59 a.m. (1159 GMT).
SpaceX launched the new fully-commercial human spaceflight mission on a Dragon spacecraft from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Tuesday.
SpaceX said that the spacecraft has travelled to a distance of 1,400 km above Earth on Wednesday — the farthest humans have travelled since the Apollo programme over 50 years ago.
The crew are scheduled to conduct science during their multi-day mission to orbit, including essential health and human performance research for NASA’s Human Research Programme.
