A historic step… Success of the first spacewalk

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The crew of the Polaris Dawn mission, operated by SpaceX, returned to Earth this week after completing the first spacewalk in the history of private missions. An operation described by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson as a “giant historic step.”

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The Dragon capsule landed off the coast of Florida in the southeastern United States at 3:37 a.m. local time (7:37 a.m. GMT), according to live video footage from SpaceX.

A team was immediately deployed to recover the capsule and the four crew members, according to AFP.

The capsule’s descent was slowed by parachutes.

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All the mission’s key objectives, which represent a new milestone in commercial space exploration, were achieved.

The mission was encouraged and financially supported by American billionaire Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4.

The crew also included two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, along with former U.S. Air Force member Scott Poteet.

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The crew launched from Florida on Tuesday, and on the first day, their spacecraft reached an altitude of 1,400 kilometers, the farthest any crew has traveled since the Apollo missions to the Moon more than half a century ago.

Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon became the two women who have traveled the farthest from Earth.

The highlight of the mission came on Thursday, with the first spacewalk by non-governmental astronauts, a risky procedure previously reserved for professional astronauts.

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Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis stepped out of the spacecraft for about ten minutes while it was at an altitude of 700 kilometers, far higher than the International Space Station.

In front of breathtaking views of the blue planet broadcast live, the 41-year-old billionaire said, “At home, we have a lot of work to do, but from here, the Earth really looks like a perfect world.”

The two adventurers performed movements to test their white and gray spacesuits, the first developed by SpaceX for spacewalks.

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The development and testing of these suits, which the company hopes to one day produce by the “millions” to send humans to Mars, was one of the main objectives of the mission.

“A giant step”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on Thursday, saying that this event marked “a giant step forward for the commercial space industry.”

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The crew, which had trained for more than two years for this mission, also tested laser communication between the spacecraft and SpaceX‘s Starlink satellites, which provide Internet access from space.

Finally, the crew conducted around 30 scientific experiments, the most notable being the study of the effects of space travel on the human body.