MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission lifts off for first-ever non-professional spacewalk

The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday and is expected to be broadcast live

Internet Service Provider (ISP) Starlink's parent company SpaceX Tuesday launched the Polaris Dawn manned mission featuring a billionaire, a pilot, and two female company employees for the performance of the first-ever private spacewalk in history.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in the US State of Florida and sought altitudes between 1,200 and 1,400 km, the greatest distance traveled by a crew since NASA’s Apollo program. Only the 24 astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther.

SpaceX co-owner Elon Musk said on X that the capsule would “pass several times through the orbital altitudes of more than 10,000 satellites and fragments of space debris.”

“There is no margin for error in our calculations,” he added on the social media network he also owns. All four crewmembers are wearing SpaceX’s spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule is to be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, it was explained.

Commanding this five-day mission is US billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is also funding part of the trip to test the company's first white, futuristic-looking spacesuits during a brief sortie outside the capsule, among other goals. At more than three times the altitude of the International Space Station, the environment is completely different in terms of radiation and micrometeorites, the 41-year-old Isaacman explained at a press conference last month. “We'll be there as little time as possible, just long enough to collect the data we want,” he said. “I wasn’t alive when humans walked on the moon,” he also reckoned.

The spacewalk, the first by non-professional astronauts, will be attempted at 06:23 GMT Thursday from a lower orbit, according to SpaceX. It is expected to be broadcast live. Isaacman (CEO and founder of the credit card processing company Shift4) and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the module's hatch. Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX’s Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from inside.