Sarah Gillis isn’t what you might consider a career astronaut. Yet, in just a few hours the 30-year-old SpaceX engineer will join pilot and “daredevil billionaire” Jared Isaacman on a history-making spacewalk.
The two will become the first civilians to float through the emptiness of space protected by little more than an experimental new space suit.
Meanwhile, fellow crew members Scott Poteet and Anna Menon will remain in the capsule, protected by the very same suits as the air drains from the vehicle and the solitary door opens onto the raw cosmos beyond.
SpaceX has provided a front row seat for the event in the form of a livelink, with the spacewalk expected to take place in the morning at 06:23 UTC (02:23 EDT) on Thursday 12 September.
Set an alarm and join us to watch a new chapter in space history unfold.
The mission is currently in its second day of orbit, having just reached its maximum height of 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) above Earth’s surface, far above the roughly 460-kilometer peak of the International Space Station.
In fact, not since the Apollo missions has any human ventured so far from the comfort of the atmosphere.
Polaris Dawn Flight Day 2 Update
The Polaris Dawn crew began Flight Day 2 with an incredible milestone – Dragon reached an apogee of more than 1,400 kilometers, marking the farthest humans have traveled in space since the completion of the Apollo program over 50 years ago.… pic.twitter.com/rDTwmzkTML
— Polaris (@PolarisProgram) September 12, 2024
It’s been nearly six decades since the Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov set history by exiting his tiny Voskhod 2 capsule hundreds of kilometers above the surface. His clumsy 10-minute tumble would be just the first of hundreds of extravehicular activities conducted by astronauts and cosmonauts risking their lives to the exploration of space.
As a new dawn in commercially funded space travel emerges, advances in knowledge and technology are resetting expectations on just who may be entitled to take a chance pushing boundaries in the name of science, exploration, and perhaps a touch of thrill-seeking.
So-called civilian astronauts are far from novelties in space flight. To get technical, Neil Armstrong was no longer employed by the military when he became the first person to stamp a footprint into the Moon’s dust.
Of course, Armstrong’s extensive training as an astronaut in the lead-up to his landmark mission makes his status trivial. Since then, a number of individuals from varied non-government backgrounds have undertaken the intense health checks and grueling training to earn a place strapped to a rocket for a short trip above the sky.
None, however, have had the chance to experience the inhospitable depths of nothingness from behind a thin window of polycarbonate, copper, and indium tenoxide as they bob about in freefall.
Not only will the team be putting their fancy new spacesuits to the ultimate test, the mission is a demonstration of what commercially funded space technology is capable of achieving – protecting fragile human bodies far from the shelter of Earth’s atmosphere.
