On the first voyage to space with an all-civilian crew, the firm established by billionaire Elon Musk sent four private passengers into orbit on Wednesday.
Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old geoscientist; Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old aerospace data engineer; Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old software entrepreneur; and Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old medical assistant, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, soon after 8 p.m. EDT. The four-person crew will now circle Earth for three days before reentering the space and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.
While the civilian travelers paid to go into space before, the so-called Inspiration4 mission is the first to do so without any professional astronauts aboard. As the access to the universe spreads beyond governments and their space agencies, the historic voyage symbolizes the next step in the evolution of human spaceflight.
The three-day joyride on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship cost Isaacman, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a Pennsylvania-based payment processing firm, approximately $250 million. The Inspiration4 mission is part of a fundraising campaign for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Isaacman offered the three remaining tickets on the Inspiration4 trip to his crewmates in addition to donating $100 million to St. Jude.
The Inspiration4 mission's successful launch represents a watershed moment for SpaceX and a boost for the expanding space tourism sector. Rivals Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson each launched to the edge of space in spacecraft created by their own aerospace firms two months ago. Although both flights this summer were suborbital, both Bezos' Blue Origin and Branson's Virgin Galactic aim to provide orbital journeys to space passengers in the future.
SpaceX Inspiration4: What is their Mission?
If anyone is curious, Inspiration4's mission has a far more significant purpose. They will spend many days in orbit before returning to Earth as astronauts, not as civilians. The crew would go on a multi-day mission of scientific study for human health, according to SpaceX's official Twitter account (@SpaceX).
According to a press release from SpaceX, while the primary focus is on human health studies, Inspiration4 will also test spaceflights that astronauts will encounter on their voyage. Inspiration4's objective also includes unlocking alternative ways and approaches to spaceflight, as humans only have a limited understanding of the subject.
However, because SpaceX will have more human flights in the future, Inspiration4 will serve as the first "testers" of future ways or plans for launching to space. This will be especially useful when they go on the first human journey to Mars onboard the Starship, which will arrive within the next decade.
Inspiration4 to Come Back After 3 Days
This would be Inspiration4's first day in orbit, and they would remain in orbit forever, rotating around the Earth. SpaceX's Inspiration4 would be in orbit for around three days, the company said.
However, it remained unclear what methods to spaceflight they would take if the crew would focus on other ways to spaceflight or whether the experiments would take them off course.
After three days in space, Dragon will reenter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down off the coast of Florida pic.twitter.com/DsmxLDqw6B
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 15, 2021
For this trip, SpaceX has teamed with several medical research teams and other organizations, all of whom have a stake in the Inspiration4 astronauts' studies. The majority of them are concerned with understanding the impacts of space on the human body, while some are concerned with genomes, scanning systems, and analyzing biological materials.
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