The recent Inspiration4 mission by SpaceX, the first ever space flight with a private citizen crew, was a complete success. The crew consisted of four people who participated in astronaut training, never having been in space before. The crew members were in great spirits when they returned last week on Saturday, September 25. The idea of the mission began as a charter flight fundraiser benefiting St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and raised over 200 million dollars. One of the crewmembers, Haley Arceneaux was a patient at St. Jude and is a cancer survivor. The mission lasted three days; intending to provide everyday civilians a chance to experience real spaceflight by floating within Earth’s orbit, giving them views from space that previously only seasoned astronauts could witness. The splashdown happened around 7:07 PM on September 25, with the flight capsule being retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean with medical personnel another other aid standing by to attend to the crewmembers and make sure that they acclimate to the rapid environmental changes upon return. All involved in the mission are thrilled at how the it turned out.
The mission was so successful that SpaceX is considering expanding crewmember size by dealing with several different contracts for future missions. With these contracts, they hope to resolve the issue of the capsules’ quantity and short lifespan, with each capsule only having the capacity of five flights, and one of them having already completed two launches. One of the contracts will allow for a space tourism company called Space Adventures. A much larger spaceship simply called Starship, a vessel larger than SpaceX’s Dragon, is in the works but has not had a first trip yet. It would explore space in much the same way as Dragon, just with greater capacity for personnel aboard. With the Success of Inspiration4 combined with future visions of innovation, ingenuity seems endless.
To read more about the Inspiration4 splashdown, click here.
For more about SpaceX’s future plans, click here.
Click here, to read some of Lenox Laser’s previous coverage of the SpaceX missions.