If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a crew of four lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024.
If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won't venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.
The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height — filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris — before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 435 miles , the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts flew. Pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet and SpaceX's Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from inside. Like SpaceX's previous astronaut flights, this one will end with a splashdown off the Florida coast.
At a preflight news conference, Isaacman — CEO and founder of the credit card processing company Shift4 — refused to say how much he invested in the flight. "Not a chance," he said.
Private Spacewalk Jared Isaacman Falcon 9 Spacesuit Development Polaris Dawn NASA Orbit
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