On September 18, SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission arrived back on Earth after spending three days in space. This groundbreaking mission accomplished something that has never been done before: send civilians to space without a trained astronaut present.
Let’s go back to a few days prior when on September 15, the all-civilian crew comprised of medical officer Hayley Arceneaux (a St. Jude’s physician’s assistant), pilot Sian Proctor (a geoscientist), mission specialist Chris Sembroski (a data engineer), and financier/mission commander Jared Isaacman (billionaire and founder of Shift4 Payments) got ready to board the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft. The goal of this mission was a little different than other space missions because instead of the purpose being scientific research, the goal of this mission was to raise $200 million towards childhood cancer research, specifically St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital. This goal has a personal connection to one of the crew members, Hayley Arceneaux. When she was 10 years old, she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma; she was treated and cured at St. Jude’s. Now, at the age of 29, she works at St. Jude’s with leukemia patients.
It should be noted that the crew did receive extensive training starting in March with centrifuge training, which exposed them to similar situations that would occur during launch, reentry, splashdown, and a potential abort scenario. In July, Isaacman and Proctor were placed in simulations in which they had to take control of the spacecraft during the flight and all of the crew underwent zero-G plane training to familiarize themselves with the feeling of weightlessness and its effects. Finally, the team did the altitude chamber training as a precaution. Altitude chamber training is when the team is exposed to low oxygen and high CO2 environments as a way to show them how their bodies would react and what protocol they should follow.
Inspiration4 was a relatively short mission, the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft reached an altitude of 367 miles above Earth (higher than the International Space Station). From there it orbited Earth for about three days. While they were in space, the crew conducted several medical experiments and collected samples and data that would help researchers better understand how microgravity affects the body. During an in-flight broadcast, Arceneaux explained a little of what it is they were examining. She talked about how “it’s been really interesting to see how fluid shifts with this microgravity environment” and how they’ve been “taking several swabs from different parts of the body to evaluate the microbiome and how it changes [with the three days in space].”
After three days in space, the Inspiration4 mission started its descent back to Earth. At about 7 p.m. on September 18, the crew landed on the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. They were given a medical exam by a physician, and then the crew got on a helicopter and returned to the mainland. This marked the end of a historic spaceflight that has opened doors to the future of space travel.
The post-flight news conference echoed this sentiment with Jared Isaacman saying “That was a heck of a ride for us, and we’re just getting started” and Todd Ericson, an Inspiration4 mission director, saying “Welcome to the second Space Age […] This is opening up a whole new chapter in spaceflight.”
It seems that we indeed have entered a new era of space travel, with civilians now having the possibility of purchasing a ticket to space. However, the exclusivity of who can go and who can’t is bound to garner more attention and criticism as commercial space travel becomes more frequent.
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