It marked the debut of the first-ever extravehicular activity (EVA) utilizing commercially developed equipment, innovative procedures, and the brand-new SpaceX EVA suit.
“Building a base on the Moon and a city on Mars will require thousands of spacesuits.The development of this suit, and the EVA performed on this mission, will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions,” Elon Musk‘s SpaceX said in a post on X.
Sharing a video of one of the astronauts, the space company said, “Commander Jared Isaacman has egressed Dragon and is going through the first of three suit mobility tests that will test overall hand body control, vertical movement with Skywalker, and foot restraint.”
Jared Isaacman, the founder of the electronic payment company Shift4, is spearheading the Polaris Dawn mission and has also financially backed the project in partnership with SpaceX. This marks Isaacman’s second space journey, following his 2021 mission where he orbited Earth for three days before a splashdown off the Florida coast.
Joining Isaacman on this mission are Scott Poteet, a former US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and two SpaceX team members: Anna Menon, a lead space operations engineer, and Sarah Gillis, an engineer in charge of astronaut training.
The mission aims to study how the human body reacts to deep space environments. These investigations will build upon decades of research conducted with government astronauts aboard the ISS.
Meanwhile, the main goal of the spacewalk is to assess the performance of SpaceX’s newly designed spacesuits. Created in-house by SpaceX, these suits are intended for use in a variety of missions, including those in Earth orbit and potentially beyond.
Source Agencies
