WASHINGTON – A billionaire and an engineer made history on Sept 12, performing the world’s first spacewalk by civilians, a feat Nasa hailed as a “giant leap forward” for the commercial space industry.

Mr Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the billionaire founder of electronic payment company Shift4, exited first at 6.52am Eastern Time (6.52pm in Singapore).

“It’s gorgeous,” he told mission control in Hawthorne, California, as a breathtaking view of Earth unfolded below him.

After he returned a few minutes later, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, 30, took her turn in space.

“The Polaris Dawn spacewalk is now complete, marking the first time commercial astronauts have completed a spacewalk from a commercial spacecraft!” tweeted SpaceX.

The spacewalk was the centrepiece of Polaris Dawn, a collaboration between Mr Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Mr Isaacman, who is leading the mission.

“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.

“Today’s success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and Nasa’s long-term goal to build a vibrant US space economy,” Nasa chief Bill Nelson wrote on X.

Before the spacewalk began, the capsule was completely depressurised, with the whole crew relying on their slim, SpaceX-developed spacesuits for oxygen, provided via an umbilical connection to Crew Dragon.

The spacewalk was scheduled to last only about 30 minutes, but the procedures to prepare for it and to finish it safely take about two hours.

The walk was meant to test the new spacesuit designs and procedures for the capsule, among other things.

Mr Isaacman, 41, Ms Gillis, Mr Scott Poteet, 50, a retired US Air Force lieutenant-colonel, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, 38, had been orbiting Earth aboard Crew Dragon since the pre-dawn launch on Sept 10 from Florida of the Polaris Dawn mission.

Ms Menon and Mr Poteet remained inside the spacecraft during the spacewalk.

Mr Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did for his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

He has declined to say how much he is paying for the missions, but they are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars based on Crew Dragon’s roughly US$55 million (S$72 million) per-seat price for other flights.

Farthest since Apollo

Throughout Sept 11, the spacecraft circled Earth at least six times in an oval orbit as shallow as 190km and stretching out as far as 1,400km, the farthest in space that humans have travelled since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

The gumdrop-shaped spacecraft then began to lower its orbit into a peak 700km position and adjust its cabin pressure to get ready for the spacewalk, formally called Extravehicular Activity (EVA).

“The crew also spent a few hours demonstrating the suit’s pressurised mobility, verifying positions and accessibility in microgravity along with preparing the cabin for the EVA,” the Polaris programme said.

Only government astronauts with several years of training have done spacewalks in the past. There have been roughly 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since its creation in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing’s Tiangong space station.

The Polaris crew has spent over two years years training with SpaceX mission simulations and “experiential learning” in challenging, uncomfortable environments, said Lt-Col Poteet.

A record 19 astronauts are now in orbit, after Russia’s Soyuz MS-26 mission ferried two cosmonauts and a US astronaut to the ISS on Sept 11, taking its headcount to 12.

Three Chinese astronauts are aboard the Tiangong space station.

The first US spacewalk was in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, and used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: The capsule was depressurised, the hatch opened, and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether.

Crew Dragon, the only US vehicle capable of reliably putting humans in orbit and returning them to earth, since 2021 has flown more than a dozen astronaut missions, mainly for Nasa.

The agency seeded development of the capsule under a programme meant to establish commercial, privately built US vehicles capable of ferrying US astronauts to and from the ISS.

Boeing’s Starliner capsule was also developed under that Nasa programme, but it is farther behind.

Starliner launched its first astronauts to the ISS in June in a troubled test mission that ended in September with the capsule coming back empty, leaving its crew on the space station for a Crew Dragon capsule to fetch in 2025. REUTERS