Watch SpaceX Polaris Dawn astronauts perform their first private spacewalk on September 12

The first-ever private spacewalk will take place on Thursday morning, September 12. You can watch this historic event live.

The groundbreaking extravehicular activity (EVA) is being performed by Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, two members of the four-person Polaris Dawn mission, which launched into orbit Tuesday morning (Sept. 10) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The spacewalk is expected to begin at 2:23 a.m. EDT (06:23 GMT), SpaceX said. You can watch it live here on Space.com or directly from the company. Coverage will begin around 1:20 a.m. EDT (05:20 GMT).

The spacewalk will last about two hours from start to finish, SpaceX and Polaris Dawn representatives said. That timing spans from the first venting of the mission’s Crew Dragon capsule to the repressurization.

Related: How SpaceX’s Historic Private Polaris Dawn Spacewalk Will Work

Crew Dragon doesn’t have an 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 don their new SpaceX EVA suits.

Only Isaacman and Gillis will leave the capsule. They will do so sequentially, not simultaneously, and they will each remain outside for 15 to 20 minutes, Isaacman said during a pre-launch press conference on Aug. 26. And both plan to maintain contact with Crew Dragon — the newly installed “Skywalker” handrails, for example — at all times during the EVA.

“We’re not just going to float around,” Isaacman said.

The main purpose of the spacewalk is to test the new SpaceX suits, which the company has developed itself and plans to use on various missions in orbit and beyond Earth.

“It’s not lost on us that it may be 10 iterations and a lot of evolutions of the suit, but that one day someone could wear a version of it that might walk on Mars,” Isaacman said Aug. 26. “And it feels like, again, a great honor to have the opportunity to test it out on this flight.”

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