The billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day journey that took them higher than anyone since NASA astronauts went to the moon.
A SpaceX capsule landed in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in predawn darkness with tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot on board.
They performed the first private spacewalk, orbiting nearly 460 miles (740 kilometers) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope. Their spacecraft reached a peak altitude of 870 miles (1,408 kilometers) after liftoff Tuesday.
Isaacman became just the 264th person to complete a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union first did so in 1965, and Sarah Gillis of SpaceX the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks have been performed by professional astronauts.
“Mission accomplished,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting a rescue team. Within an hour, all four were out of the spacecraft, fists pumping in glee as they stepped onto the ship’s deck.
It was the first time SpaceX had planned to launch near the Dry Tortugas, a cluster of islands 70 miles (113 kilometers) west of Key West. To celebrate the new location, SpaceX employees brought a large, green turtle-shaped balloon to Mission Control at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. The company usually aims closer to the Florida coast, but two weeks of bad weather prompted SpaceX to look elsewhere.
SpaceX made history when the Polaris Dawn mission allowed a crew of civilian astronauts to travel further into space than anyone had in 50 years. Billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis conducted the first civilian spacewalk.
During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule’s hatch was open for just half an hour. Isaacman emerged only waist-deep to briefly test SpaceX’s new spacesuit, followed by Gillis, who was knee-deep, bending her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also performed in orbit earlier this week.
The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, significantly shorter than those on the International Space Station. Much of that time was spent depressurizing the entire capsule and then restoring air to the cabin. Even SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits.
SpaceX sees the short exercises as a starting point for testing spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.
It was Isaacman’s second charter flight with SpaceX, with two more to come as part of his personally funded space exploration program, named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, carrying competition winners and a cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
For the recently completed Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of credit card processing company Shift4 split the cost with SpaceX. Isaacman declined to say how much he spent.
