US astronauts complete first commercial spacewalk

12-09-2024 Thu 22:06 | International | IANS

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New York, Sep 12 : Crew of US Polaris Dawn mission have completed a spacewalk on Thursday, marking the first time commercial astronauts have space-walked from a commercial spacecraft, according to SpaceX.

The spacewalk started at around 6:13 a.m. Eastern Time (1013 GMT). Two astronauts of the four-member all-civilian crew wore the SpaceX-newly-designed extravehicular activity suits for the spacewalk.

The two astronauts are American billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, Xinhua news agency reported.

Isaacman and Gillis each spent several minutes outside the capsule. The spacewalk ended at about 7:59 a.m. (1159 GMT).

SpaceX launched the new fully-commercial human spaceflight mission on a Dragon spacecraft from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Tuesday.

The spacecraft has travelled to a distance of 1,400 km above Earth on Wednesday -- the farthest humans have travelled since the Apollo programme over 50 years ago, according to SpaceX.

The crew are also scheduled to conduct science during their multi-day mission to orbit, including essential health and human performance research for NASA's Human Research Programme.

(The content of this article is sourced from a news agency and has not been edited by the ap7am team.)