A pioneering duo of astronauts has made history by becoming the first private civilians to perform a spacewalk, hailed by NASA as “a giant leap forward” for the commercial space industry.

The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, led by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, launched early Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, journeying deeper into the cosmos than any human in half a century, since the Apollo programme in the 1970s.

With the four-member crew’s Dragon spacecraft orbiting at an altitude of 700 kilometres (434 miles), pure oxygen began flowing into their suits Thursday morning, marking the official start of their walk in space, dubbed an “extravehicular activity”.

A short time later, Isaacman swung open the hatch and climbed through, gripping the hand and footholds of a structure known as “Skywalker”, as a breathtaking view of Earth unfolded below him.

“It’s gorgeous,” he told mission control in California, where teams cheered at important checkpoints.

SpaceX beats the competition

It was yet another major milestone for SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk in 2002.

Initially dismissed by the wider industry, it has since grown into a powerhouse that in 2020 beat aerospace giant Boeing in delivering a spaceship to provide rides for NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.

Prior to the hatch opening, the crew underwent a “prebreathe” procedure to remove nitrogen from their bloodstream, preventing decompression sickness. The cabin pressure was then gradually lowered to align with the vacuum of space.

Isaacman and crewmate Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX engineer, spent a few minutes each performing mobility tests on SpaceX’s next-generation suits that boast heads-up displays, helmet cameras and enhanced joint mobility systems – before returning inside.

The spacewalk ended after an hour and 46 minutes, following cabin re-pressurisation.

While it marked a first for the commercial sector, the spacewalk fell short of the daring feats from the early space era.

Early spacefarers like Soviet astronaut Alexei Leonov drifted away from their spacecraft on tethers, and a select few Space Shuttle astronauts even used jetpacks to fly completely unattached.