The first-ever private spacewalk will take place early Thursday morning (Sept. 12), and you can watch the historic action live, according to Space.com.
The pioneering extravehicular activity (EVA) will be conducted by Lehigh Valley native, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, two members of the four-person Polaris Dawn mission, which launched to Earth orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday morning (Sept. 10).
The spacewalk is expected to start at 2:23 a.m. EDT (0623 GMT), according to SpaceX.
You can watch it live here at Space.com or directly via the company.
Coverage will begin around 1:20 a.m. EDT (0520 GMT).
How long will the spacewalk take?
According to SpaceX and Polaris Dawn representatives, the spacewalk is expected to take approximately two hours, starting from the venting of the mission's Crew Dragon capsule to its depressurization.
Crew Dragon doesn't have an airlock, so its entire interior will be exposed to the vacuum of space during the EVA. That means all four crewmembers — Isaacman, Gillis, Scott "Kidd" Poteet and Anna Menon - will don their new SpaceX EVA suits.
The Polaris Dawn crew shortly before their launch on Sept. 10, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)
Only Isaacman and Gillis will exit the capsule, however. They'll do so sequentially, not simultaneously, and each will remain outside for 15 to 20 minutes, Isaacman said during a prelaunch press briefing on Aug. 26. And both of them plan to maintain contact with Crew Dragon — its newly installed "Skywalker" handrails, for example — at all times during the EVA.
About the crew:
Jared Isaacman is a tech entrepreneur and Lehigh Valley local who's been to space once before. He's also the commander of the mission.
Isaacman funded and commanded SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, which raised $250 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Isaacman hopes this mission can build on that momentum.
He is joined on Polaris Dawn by the first two SpaceX employees to launch to orbit, mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, as well as retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Scott "Kidd" Poteet, who serves as mission pilot. The quartet will spend the next five days in space, completing a few dozen experiments in the novel space environment that the mission is exploring.
What is the goal of the spacewalk?
The main goal of the spacewalk is to evaluate the new SpaceX suits that the company created internally and intends to utilize for a range of missions to Earth's orbit and beyond.
Polaris Dawn crewmembers (from left) Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis in a prelaunch photo. (Image credit: Space.com / Josh Dinner)
"It's not lost on us that, you know, it might be 10 iterations from now and a bunch of evolutions of the suit, but that, someday, someone could be wearing a version of [it] that might be walking on Mars," Isaacman said on Aug. 26. "And it feels like, again, a huge honor to have that opportunity to test it out on this flight."
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