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A first-person video from SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission shows commander Jared Isaacman opening the Crew Dragon’s hatch and moving onto an external support structure more than 450 miles above Earth. As the camera adjusts from the spacecraft’s dark interior to the intense sunlight outside, Earth fills the frame and Australia becomes visible below.

The footage is a close approximation of Isaacman’s viewpoint—not a perfect record of what human eyes see—but it offers an unusually direct look at the mission’s September 12, 2024 extravehicular activity (EVA), widely described as the first commercial spacewalk.

What the video shows

The sequence begins inside Crew Dragon, where Isaacman works the hatch before slowly moving his head and upper body outside. The camera initially shows a dark spacecraft interior. When it faces the sunlit planet, its exposure changes sharply, revealing Earth against the blackness of space.

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Australia can be identified below as Isaacman moves farther through the hatch and onto SpaceX’s ladder-like Skywalker support structure. Mission controllers react over the communications link, while SpaceX personnel applaud from the ground. Isaacman then performs movement tests in the new EVA suit, remaining connected to Dragon throughout.

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The official first-person footage was posted by the Polaris Program. SpaceX also posted footage showing Isaacman exiting Dragon and beginning suit-mobility tests.

Who was outside Crew Dragon?

Isaacman was the mission commander and the astronaut featured most prominently in the first-person footage. Sarah Gillis, Polaris Dawn’s mission specialist, also exited the spacecraft and took part in the EVA.

They were private or commercial astronauts on a privately funded mission, rather than a conventional government space-agency crew. Calling them “space tourists” is an understandable shorthand, but it leaves out the mission’s engineering and research objectives, including testing SpaceX’s EVA suit and movement procedures.

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Was this really a spacewalk?

Technically, the event was an extravehicular activity, or EVA. “Spacewalk” is the familiar public term. Before the astronauts went outside, Dragon’s cabin was depressurized. Isaacman and Gillis wore SpaceX’s newly developed EVA suits and remained attached to the spacecraft by umbilicals.

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Those connections supplied life-support functions, including oxygen and thermal-control support. The astronauts did not float freely away from Dragon. Their excursion was deliberately controlled, with the umbilicals, Skywalker structure, handholds and restraints helping them remain connected to the spacecraft.

What was Skywalker?

Skywalker was an external, ladder-like support structure attached to Crew Dragon. In microgravity, it was not a staircase in the ordinary sense. It provided handholds and a route for controlled hand-over-hand movement away from the hatch while keeping the astronauts in contact with the spacecraft.

The structure also allowed the crew to test vertical movement and foot restraints. These tests mattered because an EVA suit must allow an astronaut to position the body, use the hands and feet, handle equipment and maintain control without the support of a pressurized spacecraft cabin.

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How the astronauts stayed alive outside

Opening the hatch required much more than simply putting on a suit. The Dragon cabin was reduced to approximately 8.6 pounds per square inch, and the crew breathed pure oxygen during preparation to help reduce the risk of decompression sickness.

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The suits were pressurized to about 5 psi. They functioned as compact life-support systems rather than ordinary clothing: the suits maintained pressure around the astronauts’ bodies while the umbilicals connected them to Dragon for oxygen and thermal support.

Contemporaneous coverage described the activity outside as lasting roughly eight minutes. That is an approximate duration for the operation; it should not automatically be read as eight minutes for each astronaut individually.

The altitude has two important numbers

The EVA took place at approximately 458 miles (738 kilometers) above Earth. That is the correct altitude for the spacewalk footage.

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Polaris Dawn later reached a separate mission apogee of approximately 869 miles (1,399 kilometers). That maximum altitude was described as the farthest humans had traveled from Earth since the Apollo era, but it was not the altitude at which Isaacman opened the hatch.

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Event Altitude
Polaris Dawn EVA About 458 miles (738 km)
Mission maximum apogee About 869 miles (1,399 km)

Why Earth looks so large and bright

The video’s dramatic visual effect comes partly from the camera’s exposure adjustment. It moves from a dim interior to a scene containing both the nearly black sky and brightly illuminated Earth. The sensor has to compensate for that extreme contrast, making the planet appear to emerge suddenly from darkness.

Earth also appears unusually large because Polaris Dawn’s orbit was much higher than that of the International Space Station. The footage captures a camera’s lens, framing, exposure and color response, however, so it is more accurate to call it a first-person approximation of Isaacman’s view than a literal recording of human vision.

During the transmission, Isaacman described Earth to mission control as “a perfect world.”

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Why Polaris Dawn’s EVA mattered

Alexei Leonov completed the first human spacewalk in 1965. Government-led programs from the United States, Russia, China and other nations had conducted many EVAs before Polaris Dawn.

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The significance of Polaris Dawn was different: it demonstrated a commercial EVA launched from a commercial spacecraft in free flight. Unlike a space-station spacewalk, the operation began from Crew Dragon, and the entire cabin had to be depressurized because Dragon did not use a conventional airlock for this activity.

The mission therefore combined a highly visible first with an engineering test. The crew evaluated body and hand movement, foot restraints, vertical travel on Skywalker and the practical use of SpaceX’s new suit design. The demonstration provided operational experience, but it should not be treated as complete proof that the suit was validated for every future mission or environment.

Where to watch the footage

The first-person sequence is available in the Polaris Program’s official post on X. When watching, look for five details: the hatch opening, the camera’s exposure shift, Australia below, Isaacman’s movement onto Skywalker and the communications response from mission control.

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The event took place on September 12, 2024. It is not a new 2026 mission, but its footage remains significant because it gives viewers a rare view of a commercial EVA from the astronaut’s side of the hatch.

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