"It’s beautiful"SpaceX achieves first private spacewalk

Both crew members spent 10 minutes outside the Dragon spacecraft testing the company’s spacewalking suits, which was also one of the main objectives of the mission. The spacewalk ended approximately one hour and 45 minutes after it began.

“SpaceX, we’re coming home. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman told the mission control center in Hawthorne, California, shortly afterward, where the crew erupted in applause.

Two other passengers, pilot Scott Poteet and SpaceX employee Anna Menon, were also exposed to the vacuum of space as soon as the hatch opened, as the craft is not equipped with an airlock.

NASA celebrated SpaceX’s achievement. “Today’s success represents a major step forward for the commercial space industry and NASA’s long-term goal of building a vibrant American space economy,” US space agency chief Bill Nelson wrote on X.

The commander of the five-day mission is Isaacman, 41, who has been working with Musk’s company for several years and is financing part of the trip, the cost of which has not been disclosed.

Rounding out the team alongside Isaacman are Sarah Gillis, an engineer and astronaut trainer for the company; Anna Menon, who worked for NASA before joining SpaceX and is also a lead special operations engineer; and Scott Poteet, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a friend of Isaacman’s.

The four crew members underwent more than two years of intensive training that included hundreds of hours in simulators, as well as skydiving, scuba diving and practicing on the summit of a volcano in Ecuador.

With information from AFP.