Kriti Mehrotra
Established by tech billionaire Elon Musk, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, is close to breaking all bounds with the launch of the world’s first all-civilian mission, Inspiration4. This aerospace firm was founded to enable colonization of Mars, as reemphasized on ‘Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space,’ and with only mere civilians getting to the orbit now, that is a genuine possibility. After all, with its success, the path of exploration will be open for the rest of us as well. So, let’s find out when the Inspiration4 team will take to the skies and beyond, shall we?
Inspiration4 Lauch Date
“#Inspiration4 and @SpaceX have completed our flight readiness review and remain on track for launch!,” the mission team tweeted on September 3, 2021. This means that the spaceflight planned for aboard a previously-flown Crew Dragon Resilience capsule is all set to blast off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 15, 2021. This mission to low Earth orbit is backed by Jared Isaacman, who’ll be on the flight as Commander alongside Pilot Dr. Sian Proctor, Medical Officer Hayley Arceneaux, and Mission Specialist Christopher Sembroski.
In February earlier this year, SpaceX announced this private and charity-driven flight to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee, half of which Jared is donating himself. It also aims to help raise awareness about childhood cancer, which the hospital specializes in treating. To represent hope and back all of this is why Hayley Arceneaux, a youth osteosarcoma survivor turned Physician Assistant at St. Jude, is also on board. Yet, because this is a huge deal, the four crew members will undergo severe commercial astronaut training by SpaceX before launch.
As per the official mission website, the 24-hour launch window determined by experts for Inspiration4 is from 8 p.m. on September 14 to 8 p.m. on September 15. The exact time, or the 5-hour window for the same, will be announced approximately three days prior, after taking the weather conditions at the liftoff and landing sites, along with every potential emergency situation, into account. From what we can tell, though, SpaceX and the crew want to take off in daylight and reach roughly 80 miles above the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit safely as soon as possible.
The Crew Dragon capsule, and thus the Inspiration4 crew, will circle Earth at an altitude of 360 miles along a customized flight path for three days. Upon its conclusion, they will re-enter the atmosphere and descend towards the coast of Florida in a controlled manner with the use of parachutes to make a soft water landing in the Atlantic ocean. If all goes well, which it should, Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Christopher Sembroski, and Dr. Sian Proctor will be back on land on September 18, 2021. That’s when they will have completed the first-ever space exploration effort with exclusively private citizens on board and made history.
Read More: Jared Isaacman’s Net Worth
