A billionaire and an engineer have become the first non-professional crew to perform one of the riskiest manoeuvres in space – a spacewalk.
Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis stepped out of the SpaceX spacecraft around 15 minutes apart, starting at 11:52BST, wearing specially-designed suits.
“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Mr Isaacman said as he exited.
It was commercially funded by Mr Isaacman. Before, only astronauts with government-funded space agencies had done a spacewalk.
Mr Isaacman emerged first, wiggling his limbs, hands and feet to test his suit. He returned back inside the hatch, and Ms Gillis, who works for SpaceX, then climbed out.
Both crew narrated their spacewalk, describing how their suits performed outside of the craft.
The walk, originally scheduled for 07:23BST, was postponed early on Thursday.
Anticipation and tension grew as the crew prepared to open the hatch on the craft that has no air lock, or doorway between the vacuum outside and the rest of the spacecraft.
The four crew members spent two days “pre-breathing” to prevent becoming seriously ill from decompression sickness, known as getting “the bends”, as the pressure changed. That involves replacing nitrogen in the blood with oxygen.
The craft was then depressurised to bring it closer to the conditions of the space vacuum outside.
This type of space walk took a “very different approach” to previous walks from, for example, the International Space Station, according to Dr Simeon Barber, research scientist at the Open University.
Spacewalks are one of the most difficult manouevres in space, so the fact that a private company has pulled it off is a milestone in the history of space travel.
This walk at 435 miles (700km) was higher than any previous walk, and used innovative technology in the new extravehicular activity (EVA) astronaut suits.
BBC
