On September 12, the U.S. billionaire Jared Isaacman, who three years ago led the first non-professional astronaut team to enter orbit, once again made history.

At 6:50 am Eastern Time on the 12th (18:50 pm Beijing Time), after being delayed for several hours from the original schedule, Isaacman, wearing a spacesuit developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX, walked out of the 'Dragon' spacecraft, marking the first commercial spacewalk in human history.

With the help of a handrail named 'Skywalker' by SpaceX, he cautiously passed through the hatch on the top of the 'Dragon' spacecraft. For safety, he always kept one hand or foot on the ladder-like support structure outside the spacecraft, and a 3.6-meter safety tether connected him to the spacecraft. Unlike past spacewalks where astronauts floated a considerable distance from the International Space Station, Isaacman did not hang at the end of the rope, but only leaned out halfway, limitedly moving near the bow of the ship, rather than completely exiting the cabin. His time outside the spacecraft was only a short 10 minutes.

Jared Isaacman exits and re-enters

This spacewalk took place at an altitude of about 700 kilometers above the Earth's surface, with Isaacman and another female astronaut, Sarah Gillis, taking turns to exit for 15-20 minutes each. Gillis' time outside was less than 10 minutes.

Sarah Gillis exits and re-enters

Two other crew members remained inside the spacecraft, managing the safety tether providing oxygen and electrical utilities for those exiting, and monitoring the display screen data to ensure safety. Unlike larger spacecraft, the 'Dragon' spacecraft does not have an airlock, so after the hatch is opened, the entire cabin will be in a depressurized environment, exposing the astronauts inside to a vacuum for the entire 2-hour mission period. Therefore, they also wore spacesuits for extravehicular activity while waiting for their companions to exit.

It is reported that this also breaks the record for the largest number of people entering vacuum in space at the same time.

After Isaacman and Gilles returned to the cabin and closed the hatch, they repressurized the interior of the spacecraft with oxygen and nitrogen.

At this moment, the highlight of the "Polaris Dawn" mission has come to a successful conclusion.

Isaacman, 41 years old, is the founder of the US digital payment company Shift4 Payments. Two years ago, he and SpaceX jointly invested in the "Polaris Project", which includes at least 3 space flights. This "Polaris Dawn" mission is the first space mission and he personally serves as the commander.

After several delays, the Falcon 9 B5 rocket carrying the Crew Dragon spacecraft took off from Launch Site 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA at 17:23 Beijing time on September 10th, sending the 4 crew members of the "Polaris Dawn" mission into space.

In addition to Isaacman, the other three crew members are Scott Porritt, a retired US Air Force pilot, and Sarah Gillis and Anna Meenan, two senior engineers at SpaceX.

From left to right: Isaacman, Porritt, Gillis, Meenan.

Before starting their spacewalk, they have passed through the Van Allen radiation belt (the Van Allen radiation belt 1,000 kilometers above the surface), and completed a high-orbit trip. At 9:19 Beijing time on September 11th, SpaceX confirmed that the Crew Dragon spacecraft had reached a space orbit 1,400.7 kilometers above the surface, surpassing the height of 1,373 kilometers achieved by the Gemini 11 mission in 1966.

SpaceX said this was the farthest humans have traveled from Earth since the Apollo 11 moon mission over 50 years ago. Gilles and Menon from the crew became the farthest flying women in history.

After orbiting the Earth six times at an altitude of 1400 kilometers, the manned Dragon spacecraft descended in altitude for the extravehicular activity.

The spacewalk was the most eye-catching moment of this trip. At the same time, the astronauts carried out a series of scientific activities, conducting about 40 experiments at an altitude of 1400 kilometers. These experiments included laser communication tests between the Dragon spacecraft and Starlink satellites, collecting data to study the effects of space radiation on human health, providing biological samples for multi-omics analysis in long-term biobanks, and studying spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS).

In addition, this spacewalk also tested the new spacesuit developed by SpaceX. Isaacman said, "We wanted to learn as much as possible about this spacesuit and provide feedback to the engineers to contribute to the design improvement of future spacesuits."