The all-civilian crew broadcast a live-stream as they flew at about 17,500 miles per hour over Europe
The all-civilian crew aboard Elon Musk’s rocket ship broadcast a live-stream as they neared the end of their spaceflight.
The SpaceX capsule flew at approximately 17,500 miles an hour over Europe as one member of the four person Inspiration4 team played a few chords with a ukulele.
The Earth is orbited by the team at a height of 363.3 miles. This is higher than the International Space Station. It’s also the highest altitude that humans have reached in many years.
“We’re really proud to share this experience with everyone. We know how fortunate we are to be here,” Commander Jared Isaacman explained to viewers.
The crew also shared their zero-gravity experiences as well as a glimpse of the views of Earth through the capsule’s wide observation dome.
One billionaire e-commerce executive paid Musk an undisclosed fee for the flight. Time magazine reports that the cost was around 200 million.
Other members of the Inspiration4 team were selected via a competition and consist of a geoscientist, a physician assistant and a data engineer.
The flight preparations included simulator training, altitude fitness and microgravity training, as well as classroom work and medical examinations.
The journey, which launched shortly after on Wednesday night, marked SpaceX’s inaugural astro-tourism flight and the team are the first all-civilian crew ever to circle the Earth from space.
A webcast of the launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, showed the team of four – Jared Isaacman, 38, Sian Proctor, 51, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and Chris Sembroski, 42 – strapped into the pressurised cabin of their gleaming white SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience.
The capsule rose into the Florida sky from atop one the company’s two-stage Falcon 9 rockets. It was fitted with an observation dome and a docking hatch.
The Crew Dragon, fitted with a special observation dome in place of its usual docking hatch, reached orbit almost 10 minutes after blastoff.
After the rocket’s first stage booster separated from the spacecraft, it returned to Earth. The crew Dragon, which was equipped with an observation dome in place of its usual docking hatch, touched down on a floating landing platform in the Atlantic, on board a drone ship, affectionately known as Just Read the Instructions.
Inspiration4, also known as the mission, was created by Mr Isaacman to raise awareness for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. This is a major paediatric cancer center in Memphis, Tennessee.
While in orbit, the crew will perform a series of medical experiments with “potential applications for human health on Earth and during future spaceflights,” the group said.
The Inspiration4 crew is not allowed to fly the spacecraft. It is controlled by ground-based flight teams, and onboard guidance systems.