Two private astronauts moved outside their spacecraft early Thursday morning, conducting the first-ever commercial spacewalk.

The spacewalk was the centerpiece of Polaris Dawn, a collaboration between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who is leading the mission.

“Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” he said while standing in the hatch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule with the planet above his head.

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The successful operation further reinforces that space travel is no longer the exclusive province of professional astronauts working at governmental space agencies like NASA, and now neither is the derring-do of spacewalks, when astronauts are protected by just their spacesuits from airless doom. The Polaris missions — this one is the first of three — aim to accelerate technological advances needed to fulfill Mr. Musk’s hope of sending people to Mars someday.

ImageSarah Gillis, right, a SpaceX engineer, exited the capsule after Mr. Isaacman returned during the spacewalk.Credit...SpaceX

Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, cheered the spacewalk, which the government space agency played almost no role in.

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