2024-09-13 06:05:29
Astronauts have not been this far from Earth for decades: the crew of the “Polaris Dawn” mission has disembarked from their spacecraft.
For the members of “Polaris Dawn” it was a particularly delicate part of the private space mission: the extravehicular activities in space suits used for the first time.
The first member of the four-person crew stepped out of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule at around 12:50 p.m. today. Sarah Gillis then undertook her spacewalk for about 10 minutes. The remaining two crew members will follow later.
The astronauts do not float freely in space, but remain attached to a kind of ladder via foot straps. They are supplied with breathable air from the spacecraft via a hose – not from a tank integrated into a kind of backpack, as is the case during external missions on the ISS space station.
Another difference is that the Crew Dragon spacecraft – unlike the ISS – does not have an exit hatch. For the astronauts who remain in the capsule, this means that they also have to slip into their spacesuits developed by SpaceX, because when the hatch is open they are exposed to the vacuum of space and there is no longer any breathable air in the cabin.
In preparation, the crew went through a so-called pre-breathe process. Nitrogen was slowly removed from the blood so that the gas did not form bubbles in the tissue and bloodstream when the pressure changed.
During the “first commercial spacewalk” – as it says on the project’s website – the suit is intended to ensure greater mobility than previous suits. It also features a display built into the 3D-printed helmet, a camera and new materials for better heat regulation in ice-cold space.
A few hours after launch on Tuesday, the privately funded space mission had reached its maximum altitude of 1,400 kilometers above Earth, SpaceX announced on the short message service X.
This is the greatest distance humans have been from Earth since the last Apollo missions to the moon in the early 1970s. The ISS is at an altitude of about 400 kilometers.
Billionaire entrepreneur Isaacman is leading the mission, which will last up to five days, in coordination with SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who will remain on the ground. Isaacman, Kidd Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon were launched into space on board the Crew Dragon with a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral spaceport on the west coast of Florida.