The first private spacewalk will take place early Thursday morning (September 12), and you'll be able to watch the historic action live.
The pioneering extravehicular activity (EVA) will be conducted by Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, two members of the four-person crew. Polaris Dawn mission, which Launched into Earth orbit on top of a SpaceX The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off early Tuesday morning (September 10).
The spacewalk is expected to begin at 5:58 a.m. EDT (0958 GMT), According to SpaceXYou can watch it live here on Space.com or directly through the companyCoverage will begin around 4:58 a.m. EDT (0858 GMT).
He spacewalk According to SpaceX and Polaris Dawn representatives, the mission will last about two hours from start to finish. The time span is from the initial purge of the mission's Crew Dragon capsule to its repressurization.
Related: How SpaceX's historic private Polaris Dawn spacewalk will work
The Crew Dragon has no airlock, so its entire interior will be exposed to the vacuum of space during the EVA. That means all four crew members — Isaacman, Gillis, Scott “Kidd” Poteet and Anna Menon — will be donning their new SpaceX EVA suits.
Only Isaacman and Gillis will exit the capsule, though. They will do so sequentially, not simultaneously, and each will remain outside for 15 to 20 minutes, Isaacman said during a prelaunch news conference on Aug. 26. And both plan to maintain contact with Crew Dragon (its new “Skywalker” handrails, for example) at all times during the EVA.
“We're not just going to float around out there,” Isaacman said.
The primary purpose of the spacewalk is to test SpaceX's new suits, which the company developed in-house and intends to use on a variety of missions to Earth orbit and beyond.
“It's not lost on us that, you know, it may be 10 iterations from now and a bunch of evolutions of the suit, but that, someday, someone could be wearing a version of (it) that could walk on Mars“Isaacman said Aug. 26. “And it feels, again, like a great honor to have the opportunity to test it on this flight.”
Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:35 a.m. ET on Sept. 12 with a new EVA target time of 5:58 a.m. EDT.
