Jared Isaacman Completes First Commercial Spacewalk on Polaris Dawn Mission
September 12, 2024 — In a historic achievement for private space exploration, Jared Isaacman, the entrepreneur and pilot, has successfully completed the first commercial spacewalk as part of the Polaris Dawn mission. This milestone not only marks a new chapter in space tourism but also sets records for the highest altitude orbit by a human crew since the Apollo program.
The Polaris Dawn mission, launched on September 10, 2024, by SpaceX, represents the first of three planned missions in the Polaris Program, initiated by Isaacman, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. The mission achieved multiple milestones, including reaching an altitude of 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) from Earth, the farthest any crew has traveled since the Apollo missions.
Isaacman, along with his crew members Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon, embarked on an elliptic orbit that took them through parts of the Van Allen radiation belt. This critical aspect of the mission aimed to study the health effects of space radiation on the human body.
On September 12, Isaacman performed a spacewalk, becoming the first private citizen to conduct such an activity. This spacewalk, conducted outside the Crew Dragon spacecraft, was part of a series of groundbreaking achievements for the Polaris Dawn mission. Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis also set records during the mission, with Menon becoming the first woman to fly farther from Earth than any previous female astronaut, and Gillis, at 30 years old, becoming the youngest person to participate in a spacewalk.
The mission also set a new record for the number of people simultaneously exposed to the vacuum of space, with four individuals performing the spacewalk. Additionally, it contributed to the record for the most people in space at one time, with a total of 19, including the Polaris Dawn crew, the International Space Station crew, and the crew of China’s Tiangong space station.
The Polaris Dawn mission safely concluded on September 15, 2024, with the crew’s splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, marking the end of a nearly five-day spaceflight.
This mission underscores the expanding role of private enterprises in space exploration and paves the way for future commercial space endeavors. The Polaris Program is set to continue pushing the boundaries of space travel, offering new opportunities for scientific discovery and commercial space activities.
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