World’s First Commercial EVA on Polaris Dawn

Jared Isaacman looks down at Earth from the hatch of Crew Dragon Resilience

Today Jared Isaacman made history when he “stepped” (more floated) out of Crew Dragon Resilience into the vacuum of space, 700 km above the surface of the Earth. We were greeted to incredible views of the Earth down below, as Dragon went through an orbital sunset. Jared remarked on the way through the hatch “SpaceX, back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.”

This marked the beginning of the first ever spacewalk undertaken by a commercial entity, and the first use of a spacesuit entirely developed by a private company to step outside a vehicle in space. This is crucial for SpaceX’s long term goals of settling Mars, as they will need a spacesuit that is far cheaper, more flexible, and easier to fit to different people than the ones NASA uses on the ISS. 

Before Jared left the capsule, the crew had had to go through a two day pre-breathing schedule, getting them ready to be in the pressurised suits for the EVA. This is because Dragon has no airlock, instead the whole cabin depressurised to allow crew to traverse outside, which meant that all four members of the mission had to wear their EVA suits for the entire duration of the EVA, rather than just Isaacman and Gillis. The process of the immediate preparation for the spacewalk took quite a while, as the suits had to fully pressurise, leak checks had to be performed, the capsule had to depressurise into the tanks in the trunk of the vehicle, and then the hatch had to be opened to allow them to move into the vacuum of space. This was not the same as the EVAs performed at the ISS, those are untethered and thus the suits are rather bulkier, instead the crew were connected via umbilicals to the spacecraft, providing power and oxygen to the crew inside. 

Today was purely designed to test out the mobility of the suit when pressurised and in zero gravity. Both Jared Isaacman and SpaceX employee and fellow astronaut Sarah Gillis went through a program of mobility checks when outside the vehicle, rigorously ensuring that it was up to the standard that SpaceX designed it to meet (with each lasting around eight minutes). This is the first version of the suit that SpaceX has developed, and they have stated that they are going to develop it further, presumably into an untethered version and ones for surface use on the moon and Mars.

This marks the beginning of what promises to be the most exciting chapter in the history of humanity’s exploration of the stars, success today means that SpaceX can continue to develop their human spaceflight programme - I’m sure we are all eagerly anticipating the rest of the Polaris programme, with Polaris 2 flying again on Dragon, and Polaris 3 being the first human flight on Starship, there sure is a lot to look forward to in the world of human space exploration! 

Thank you for reading this article by Luke Madgett