Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, the first civilian to walk in space, has returned from a five-day trip on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket
Tech billionaire Jared Isaacman returned to Earth on Sunday, April 15, completing a five-day journey that took him to greater heights than any NASA astronauts had reached since they first landed on the moon in Florida’s Dry Tortugas, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers, and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
They performed the first private spacewalk, orbiting nearly 450 miles above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope. The spacecraft reached a maximum altitude of 1,408 kilometers after launch on Tuesday, 10.
Isaacman became the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union conducted the first in 1965. Until now, all spacewalks have been performed by professional astronauts. “Mission complete,” Isaacman reported as the capsule floated in the water, awaiting the rescue team.
Within an hour, all four were out of their spacecraft, cheering with clenched fists as they emerged onto the deck of the ship. It was the first time SpaceX had opted to land near the Dry Tortugas, a group of islands 70 miles west of Key West. To celebrate the new home, SpaceX employees carried a large green turtle balloon to Mission Control at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
The company typically targets locations closer to the Florida coast, but two weeks of adverse weather forecasts have prompted SpaceX to look elsewhere.
During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule’s hatch remained open for just over half an hour. Isaacman emerged only waist-high to briefly test out SpaceX’s newest spacesuit, followed by Gillis, who flexed his arms and legs for several minutes in space.
Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also performed in orbit earlier this week. The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, significantly shorter than those on the International Space Station.
Most of that time was spent depressurizing the entire capsule and then restoring air to the cabin. SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped into their seats, were also wearing spacesuits.
SpaceX sees the short exercise as a starting point for testing spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.
This was Isaacman’s second charter trip with SpaceX, with two more to go as part of his personally funded space exploration program called Polaris, named after the North Star.
It paid an undisclosed sum for its first space flight in 2021, carrying contest winners and a childhood cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
For the recently completed Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of credit card processing company Shift4 shared costs with SpaceX. Isaacman won’t disclose how much he spent./AP
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Source: Terra
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