Carrying four private citizens, including SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, the SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched into space on Tuesday and spent five days in orbit.<\/p>\n
“We are mission complete,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team.<\/p>\n
While orbiting the planet, Mission commander Mr Isaacman joined a small group of spacewalkers – he was the 264th – who until now had included only professional astronauts from a dozen countries.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
The SpaceX Polaris Dawn spacewalk was labelled a “highly risky mission” and they orbited nearly 460 miles (740km) above Earth – higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope.<\/p>\n
Mr Isaacman founded Shift4 Payments, a payment processor, at the age of 16 and is now worth an estimated $1.9bn (\u00a31.45bn).<\/p>\n
It was his second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more scheduled under his personally-finance space exploration programme, named Polaris (after the North Star).<\/p>\n
The paid an undisclosed amount for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking contest winners and a paediatric cancer survivor into space<\/strong>, raising millions for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.<\/p>\nFor his most recent flight, called Polaris Dawn, he charged the cost with SpaceX – but Mr Isaacman has not revealed how much he spent.<\/p>\n
In a live feed relayed back to Earth, speaking during the spacewalk<\/strong> he could be heard saying: “Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.”<\/p>\nAll four members of the Polaris Dawn crew wore SpaceX’s new spacewalking suits to protect themselves and a main aim of the mission was to test these suits.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/strong>
Faulty spacecraft heads back to Earth – without its astronauts<\/strong>
Musk to destroy International Space Station by 2030<\/strong>
The moon’s south pole is the space race 2.0<\/strong><\/p>\nThe spacewalkers had around 15 minutes outside after climbing through a hatch one by one. While still tethered to the spacecraft, with their feet remaining inside, they carried out a series of stretches to tests the suits.<\/p>\n
Mission pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and mission specialist and medical officer Ms Menon stayed in their seats and monitored vital support systems throughout the operation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n
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