Four private citizens ride SpaceX rocket into orbit on historic mission – Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

With the backing of a billionaire businessman, four private citizens blasted off Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a first-of-its-kind fully commercial three-day spaceflight aboard a SpaceX crew capsule, riding to an altitude higher than any person has flown in two decades.

The Inspiration4 mission includes a wealthy entrepreneur with a penchant for aerobatic flying, a science educator with a lifelong ambition to fly in space, a physician assistant who survived childhood cancer, and an Air Force veteran turned data engineer.

Moments later, the second stage’s single engine ignited to send the Crew Dragon capsule into orbit.

The Inspiration4 mission follows suborbital commercial launches space in July by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, space companies established by billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos.

Liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on the Inspiration4 mission, opening a new era in human spaceflight with the launch off the first all-private crew to orbit.

The Inspiration4 crew is commanded by billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman, 38, who paid SpaceX to charter the four-seat Crew Dragon spacecraft for three days in orbit.

The mission is fully automated, but the Inspiration4 crew — all new to spaceflight — trained for six months to prepare for living in space.

The Falcon 9 rocket accelerated the Crew Dragon capsule to a speed of some 17,000 mph (27,400 kilometers per hour) to reach orbital velocity.

That speed will keep the spacecraft in space for three days, when the Inspiration4 mission will come back to Earth.

A few minutes later, the ship’s nose cone unlatched and opened, revealing a new three-layer plexiglass dome window, or cupola, flying in space for the first time on the Inspiration4 mission.

The cupola replaces the docking port used Dragon flights to the International Space Station.

The Inspiration4 mission will travel solo, without linking up with the station, and the cupola will offer the Isaacman and crew panoramic views of the planet from space.

SpaceX has fitted the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft with a plexiglass “cupola” viewing window for the Inspiration4 mission.

The clear dome takes the place of the Dragon docking port used for missions to the International Space Station.https://t.co/K03ErG8ZHF pic.twitter.com/pkamdLdsQV.

Inspiration4 is orbiting above the altitude of the International Space Station, and higher than any humans have flown in some two decades, since a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The company plans no continuous video coverage of the flight, as NASA does with Dragon missions to the space station, but there are several live events in the flight plan, according to Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Inspiration4’s mission manager.

The mission schedule is planned to the minute, Poteet said. The crew will participate in several biomedical experiments before, during, and after their three-day spaceflight.

The crew will also record personal messages for supporters and capture video for a Netflix documentary about the mission.

SpaceX’s recovery team will be on standby to pull the capsule from the ocean and help the crew exit the spacecraft.

The crew members will fly back to Kennedy Space Center by helicopter.

The Inspiration4 mission is an all-commercial affair that leaves NASA largely on the sidelines.

The space agency has turned over astronaut transportation to low Earth orbit to the private sector, through contracts with SpaceX and Boeing, and eventually wants a commercial space station to replace the International Space Station.

“We want to keep the International Space Station going until 2030, and then we want to phase that out.

Under that scenario, NASA, international space agencies, companies, and private citizens would be able to purchase rides to a commercial space station.

The space agency’s support includes communications links with the Crew Dragon capsule through ground stations and NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, a network of satellites in geostationary orbit also used to communicate with the space station.

SpaceX got $2.6 billion in government funding to design and build the human-rated Crew Dragon spacecraft, and Boeing received a similar $4.2 billion deal for its Starliner spacecraft.

SpaceX’s training included 12-hour and 30-hour simulations in a mock-up of a Crew Dragon spacecraft at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California

On that mission, sponsored by the Houston-based company Axiom Space, the Dragon spacecraft will dock with the space station, and the private astronauts will spend about a week living and working there under an arrangement with NASA

31 from Kennedy Space Center to kick off a six-month expedition to the space station

Live coverage: Inspiration4 streaks into orbit from Kennedy Space Center