A successful launch by Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Wednesday evening resulted in the Inspiration4 orbiting Earth for the next three days. At 8:02 p.m. ET, the company’s first private launch and the world’s first all-civilian spaceflight lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the delight of a roaring audience that included Musk.
The project is being funded by Jared Isaacman, the millionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments and an accomplished pilot and commander of Inspiration4. He’ll be joined by Hayley Arceneaux, a medical assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dr. Sian Proctor, a geoscientist, and Chris Sembroski, a data engineer and a St. Jude donor.
The Inspiration4 objective was developed by Isaacman and is being implemented as part of a larger fundraising campaign aimed at raising $200 million for the children’s hospital. The tycoon has been tight-lipped about the amount he paid SpaceX for the flight.
Interestingly, this is SpaceX’s fourth crewed trip, but the first to carry private citizens rather than professionally trained astronauts. The Inspiration4 campaign is part of a $200 million fundraising drive for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“I can’t express enough how appreciative we are of this amazing opportunity, we know that the four of us are about to have an experience and only about 600 or so had before us,” Isaacman told reporters Tuesday. “And we’re very focused on making sure that we give back every bit of that time that we get on-orbit for the people in the causes that matter most to us.”
Medical officer Hayley Arceneaux, a cancer survivor and physician’s assistant at St. Jude; pilot Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and scientific communicator; and mission expert Chris Sembroski, a data engineer, are among those accompanying him on the flight.
Following a successful liftoff, SpaceX plans to land the rocket’s first stage on the deck of one of its massive drone ships, named “Just Read the Instructions”. It will be assisted by one of SpaceX’s newest ships, “Doug”, which is named after retired NASA astronaut Doug Hurley, who was one of the first two humans to fly inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of the Demo 2 mission in May 2020.
