First images broadcast from inside the Dragon capsule showed the four-strong crew preparing for the historic event \u2013 and sharing fist bumps with each other.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, 41, was the first to exit the capsule \u2013 joining a small, elite group of spacewalkers who until today had included only professional astronauts.<\/p>\n
After opening the hatch, a body camera showed his ascent through the narrow opening before incredible footage showed the spacewalk taking place to huge cheers from mission control at Cape Canaveral in Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gorgeous,\u201d he said, in awe of what he could see, as he eased out of the spacecraft into the vacuum of space, hundreds of miles from Earth.<\/p>\n
He kept a hand or foot attached to the capsule the whole time as he flexed his arms and legs to see how the new spacesuit held up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe handsfree demonstration is very comparable to the trainer, in terms of the foot restraint,\u201d he added, as he tested his spacesuit.<\/p>\n
He had said before lift-off earlier this week: \u201cWhatever risk is associated with it, it is worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t alive when humans walked on the moon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars, and venturing out and exploring our solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tech entrepreneur blasted into space<\/strong> from Florida before dawn on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday for the five-day flight \u2013 along with mission pilot Scott Poteet, 50, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis, 30, and Anna Menon, 38, both senior engineers at the company.<\/p>\nMs Gillis followed Mr Isaacman out of the capsule on Thursday to carry out the same mobility tests.<\/p>\n
They each had 12ft (3.6m) tethers but did not unfurl them, and instead bobbed up and down in weightlessness, no higher than their knees out of the capsule.<\/p>\n
The mission, called Polaris Dawn, to test a new line of spacesuits is the Elon Musk<\/strong>-led company\u2019s riskiest mission yet \u2013 from a space capsule that doesn\u2019t have a safety airlock, and in suits far slimmer than the bulky protective layers worn by NASA<\/strong> astronauts.<\/p>\nIt is the first of three funded by Mr Isaacman \u2013 a pilot and the founder of electronic payment company Shift4.<\/p>\n
He has refused to say how much he is paying for the missions, but they are believed to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars based on Crew Dragon\u2019s roughly $55m (\u00a342m) per-seat price for other flights.<\/p>\n
Ms Gillis could be heard saying \u201cpretty good\u201d as she carried out her spacewalk \u2013 before she followed Mr Isaacman back into the capsule, after being told what sounded like she had less than six minutes of oxygen supply left.<\/p>\n
\u201cPressure indicates good seal,\u201d mission control told the astronauts, reassuringly, as the hatch was shut again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was really cool,\u201d said one of the presenters on the SpaceX live stream.<\/p>\n
Mr Menon and Mr Poteet remained inside the spacecraft during the spacewalk.<\/p>\n
Polaris Dawn was planned down to the minute with little room for error. The crew spent two-and-a-half years training with SpaceX mission simulations.<\/p>\n
There were a few glitches, however \u2013 Mr Isaacman had to manually pull the hatch open instead of pushing a button on board, and Ms Gillis reported seeing bulges in the hatch seal.<\/p>\n
Only government astronauts with several years of training have done spacewalks in the past.<\/p>\n
There have been around 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since it was set up in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing\u2019s Tiangong space station.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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