First images broadcast from inside the Dragon capsule showed the four-strong crew preparing for the historic event – and sharing fist bumps with each other.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, 41, was the first to exit the capsule – joining a small, elite group of spacewalkers who until today had included only professional astronauts.<\/p>\n
After opening the hatch, a body camera showed his ascent through the narrow opening before incredible footage showed the spacewalk taking place to huge cheers from mission control at Cape Canaveral in Florida.<\/p>\n
“It’s gorgeous,” he said, in awe of what he could see, as he eased out of the spacecraft into the vacuum of space, hundreds of miles from Earth.<\/p>\n
He kept a hand or foot attached to the capsule the whole time as he flexed his arms and legs to see how the new spacesuit held up.<\/p>\n
“The handsfree demonstration is very comparable to the trainer, in terms of the foot restraint,” he added, as he tested his spacesuit.<\/p>\n
He had said before lift-off earlier this week: “Whatever risk is associated with it, it is worth it.”<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t alive when humans walked on the moon,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’d certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars, and venturing out and exploring our solar system.”<\/p>\n
The tech entrepreneur blasted into space<\/strong> from Florida before dawn on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday for the five-day flight – along with mission pilot Scott Poteet, 50, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis, 30, and Anna Menon, 38, both senior engineers at the company.<\/p>\nMs Gillis followed Mr Isaacman out of the capsule on Thursday to carry out the same mobility tests.<\/p>\n
They each had 12ft (3.6m) tethers but did not unfurl them, and instead bobbed up and down in weightlessness, no higher than their knees out of the capsule.<\/p>\n
The mission, called Polaris Dawn, to test a new line of spacesuits is the Elon Musk<\/strong>-led company’s riskiest mission yet – from a space capsule that doesn’t have a safety airlock, and in suits far slimmer than the bulky protective layers worn by NASA<\/strong> astronauts.<\/p>\nIt is the first of three funded by Mr Isaacman – a pilot and the founder of electronic payment company Shift4.<\/p>\n
He has refused to say how much he is paying for the missions, but they are believed to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars based on Crew Dragon’s roughly $55m (\u00a342m) per-seat price for other flights.<\/p>\n
Ms Gillis could be heard saying “pretty good” as she carried out her spacewalk – before she followed Mr Isaacman back into the capsule, after being told what sounded like she had less than six minutes of oxygen supply left.<\/p>\n
“Pressure indicates good seal,” mission control told the astronauts, reassuringly, as the hatch was shut again.<\/p>\n
“That was really cool,” said one of the presenters on the SpaceX live stream.<\/p>\n
Mr Menon and Mr Poteet remained inside the spacecraft during the spacewalk.<\/p>\n
Polaris Dawn was planned down to the minute with little room for error. The crew spent two-and-a-half years training with SpaceX mission simulations.<\/p>\n
There were a few glitches, however – Mr Isaacman had to manually pull the hatch open instead of pushing a button on board, and Ms Gillis reported seeing bulges in the hatch seal.<\/p>\n
Only government astronauts with several years of training have done spacewalks in the past.<\/p>\n
There have been around 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since it was set up in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing’s Tiangong space station.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n
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