A four-person crew made up of civilians has returned home from a three-day trip to Earth’s atmosphere. This was the first time in history that an entire crew of non-astronauts flew to space and back.
The spacecraft that the group was in was launched by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company dedicated to space exploration. The crew was led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, the CEO of a payment processing company called Shift4 Payments Inc.. Before the launch Isaacman told NBC, “From the start of this mission, I’ve been very aware of how fortunate we are to be part of this history SpaceX is creating right now.” Joining Isaacman were Hayley Arcenaux, a physician at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Chris Sembroski, an Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer, and Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and licensed pilot.
SpaceX’s mission, titled Inspiration4, made history as the farthest spaceflight containing civilians. The spacecraft traveled 367 miles above Earth’s surface, which is even farther than the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth at around 240 miles. According to CNN, the ship they were in, the Crew Dragon, was described by NASA as the “safest crewed vehicle ever flown”. The crew launched on Wednesday Sept. 15 and returned to Earth on Saturday Sept. 18. They orbited Earth for three days before returning.
The descent of the crew was live-streamed, and according to CNN, “The crew were shown watching movies, and occasionally heard responding to SpaceX’s mission control inside their fully autonomous spacecraft.” Benji Reed, SpaceX’s director of crew mission management told CNN that there were a few issues from a technical standpoint, but that they “were worked out”. The issues apparently had to do with a waste management fan. Even Musk himself commented that the next space-tourist flights would have “upgraded toilets”. According to Insider, Musk also stated that the next flight would have a small oven for heating food, and WiFi, provided by SpaceX’s satellite-internet project, Starlight.
This is only the most recent of a slew of space trips taken this year. Jeff Bezos, former CEO of Amazon, had a highly publicized trip to space back in July. Currently these types of space vacations are only available to the extremely wealthy, but SpaceX has at least five other trips planned. Maybe one day going on a vacation to space will be as simple as going to the beach.
