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- SpaceX’s first space tourists returned to Earth and splashed off the coast of Florida.
- Fans of the Inspiration4 mission circled the Earth for three days aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
- It was the world’s first all-tourist flight to orbit, but SpaceX has already planned another.
SpaceX and its four passengers emerged victorious after the world’s first all-tourist orbit flight.
The company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed off the coast of Florida on Saturday at 7:06 p.m. ET, carrying four amateur astronauts: billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman, geoscientist and science communicator Dr Sian Proctor, the physician -assistant Hayley Arceneaux and engineer Chris Sembroski. None of them are professional astronauts.
“It was a hell of a ride for us, and we’re just getting started,” Isaacman noted on the livestream after the landing.
The unlikely quartet reunited after Isaacman chartered the flight from SpaceX and offered three seats in a raffle and fundraising partnership with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He called the Inspiration4 mission.
The motley crew spent three days orbiting Earth aboard the Dragon capsule. They have flown up to 367 miles (590 kilometers) – farther from the planet than anyone has traveled since the era of the space shuttle. They took cognitive tests and scanned their organs with an ultrasound for scientific research. Sembroski was playing the ukulele. Proctor made art. They all admired the view
On Saturday night, the Crew Dragon fired its thrusters to launch into a high-speed drop to Earth. Tiles on the spaceship’s belly protected its passengers as friction superheated the atmosphere around it to a plasma of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
A few miles above the Earth’s surface, parachutes shot out of the capsule, likely causing a significant jolt to passengers as the spacecraft slowed its fall.
The Crew Dragon fell into the Atlantic Ocean and jumped in like a toasted marshmallow, covered in soot from the fiery descent. This isn’t the first time this particular capsule, named Resilience, has suffered such a crash: it’s the same ship that transported SpaceX’s first full crew of astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA for the year. last, then brought them home in May.
Salvage crews in boats swarmed the scene to pull the spaceship out of the water and help the travelers out.
SpaceX has opened the doors to private space tourism
The Inspiration4 crew inside a Crew Dragon model spaceship. From left to right: Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux.
EspaceX
The safe return of the Inspiration4 crew is a major milestone in a new era of space tourism.
NASA did not conduct this mission; SpaceX did it, according to Isaacman’s specifications. He chooses the duration of the flight, the altitude, the crew and their activities in orbit. He even contributed his own idea – a climb up Mount Rainier – to their nearly six-month training program.
SpaceX has already scheduled another sightseeing flight for January. For this mission, called AX-1, the company Axiom Space chartered a Crew Dragon to take customers to the space station for eight days.
The AX-1 crew includes real estate investor Larry Connor, Canadian investor Mark Pathy and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe. Axiom Space vice president former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría will lead the mission.
Ax-1 crew members, left to right: Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe.
Axiom Space
For now, SpaceX is the only entity capable of launching people into orbit from the United States. In October, it is expected to launch another crew of astronauts for NASA – the third of six Crew Dragon flights the agency has purchased.
SpaceX developed this spacecraft as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program, a competition that provided funding to facilitate the development of commercial spacecraft.
The program also funded Boeing to develop a human-capable spacecraft, but that vehicle got bogged down in technical issues and delays. It still has to complete an unmanned test flight to the ISS before it can carry people.
The Inspiration4 mission is launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 15, 2021.
Inspiration4 / John Kraus
Meanwhile, SpaceX ended the United States’ nine-year hiatus in domestic manned spaceflight in May 2020, when Crew Dragon sent two NASA astronauts to the ISS. NASA also called on SpaceX to land its next astronauts on the moon.
Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, aims to one day send the company’s vehicles to Mars and build a colony there.
Isaacman shares this vision.
“I am a true believer,” Isaacman said at a press conference in February. “I drank the Kool-Aid in terms of the grand ambition for humanity to be a multiplanetary species. And I think we all want to live in a Star Wars, Star Trek world where people jump in their spaceship, and I know it’s going to come. But there has to be that first step, that’s what Inspiration4 stands for. “
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