It marked the debut of the first-ever extravehicular exercise (EVA) using commercially developed gear, modern procedures, and the brand-new SpaceX EVA swimsuit.
“Constructing a base on the Moon and a metropolis on Mars would require 1000’s of spacesuits.The event of this swimsuit, and the EVA carried out on this mission, shall be vital steps towards a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions,” Elon Musk‘s SpaceX stated in a submit on X.
Sharing a video of one of many astronauts, the house firm stated, “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.
