SpaceX’s first all-civilian mission launches to orbit
The first all-civilian crew in history has made it to space. The Inspiration4 crew took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, commencing the first space mission in human history featuring zero trained astronauts.
The four-person crew will be spending time in orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which was affixed to a Falcon 9 rocket. They’ll ascend to an altitude of around 575 kilometers – the highest that any humans have gone since the last Hubble telescope servicing mission in 2009. That altitude is above the current orbit of the Hubble and the International Space Station, so they’ll be flying over every other human in space, too.
The crew will be going around the earth around 15 times each day they’re in space. While they’re up there, they’ll be able to view outer space from a transparent observation dome “cupola” that was affixed to Crew Dragon’s nose cone, especially for this flight.
SpaceX senior director of human spaceflight Benji Reed said, “Ultimately, we want to make life multi-planetary, and that means putting millions of people in space. The long-term vision is that spaceflight becomes airline-like like you buy a ticket, and you go.”
If all goes as planned, we’ll be seeing the Inspiration4 crew in three days, when they’ll splash down back to Earth in either the Gulf or the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.