The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission traveled one by one, spending about 10 minutes each outside the Crew Dragon capsule, as Elon Musk’s aerospace company once again pushed the boundaries of commercial spaceflight.

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Video of the Polaris Dawn mission spacewalk
(source: SpaceX)

Jared Isaacman, a pilot and founder of the electronic payments company Shift4, walked first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crew members Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from the inside. The entire process, which took place about 450 miles (730 kilometers) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday’s launch from Florida.

Billionaire Isaacman is funding this flight, just as he did with SpaceX's Inspiration4 flight in 2021.

Live-streamed on SpaceX's website, the mission tested advanced equipment including a lighter spacesuit and a procedure for fully depressurizing the Crew Dragon capsule - technology Musk hopes can be developed for ambitious future private missions to Mars.

“Back home, we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said after stepping out of the spacecraft, with the planet’s silhouette shimmering in half-light and half-dark behind him.

It is one of the most dangerous missions yet for SpaceX, the only private company that has demonstrated the ability to regularly fly people to and from low Earth orbit for commercial, tourist and scientific purposes.

Before the spacewalk began at around 6:52 a.m. UTC Thursday, the capsule was fully depressurized and the astronauts had to rely on SpaceX-developed spacesuits for oxygen, supplied through a connection to the Crew Dragon capsule.

Isaacman, 41, and Gillis, 30, walked from the Crew Dragon’s hatch into space to test various body movements in the suits, providing feedback to ground control. Their postures appeared stiff, as they could move their arms at the elbows and shoulders but less at the waist, back and neck.

Ground teams at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California monitored the capsule's sealing and conducted leak checks as the astronauts returned to their cabin seats.

The first US spacewalk in 1965, aboard the Gemini spacecraft, used a procedure similar to the one used on Thursday: the spacecraft was depressurized, the hatch opened and an astronaut wearing a spacesuit stepped out on a tether.

Previously, only astronauts from state agencies conducted spacewalks. There have been about 270 spacewalks on the International Space Station (ISS) since it was established in 2000, and 16 spacewalks by Chinese astronauts on China's Tiangong space station.

Since 2001, Crew Dragon, the only US spacecraft capable of reliably carrying humans into orbit and returning them to Earth, has flown more than a dozen missions carrying astronauts into space, primarily for NASA.

Hoang Anh (according to SpaceX, NASA, Reuters)