SpaceX is preparing to launch the first tourist flight into space, this evening, Wednesday, with 4 people on board who have never been to orbit before.
The mission, which is called “Inspiration4”, is expected to be launched today, Wednesday, at 8:02 pm (midnight GMT) aboard a “Falcon 9” rocket, which carries a Dragon capsule, from the legendary “39A” launch pad at the Kennedy Center NASA in Florida.
The four Americans on board the spacecraft are scheduled to fly farther from the International Space Station, aiming for an orbit of 575 km, and they will circle the world about 15 times a day.
At the end of their journey, they will begin to return to Earth and the craft will land off the coast of Florida and its enormous speed will be reduced by parachutes.
Trip participants
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old American, owner of a financial services company, and experienced pilot is one of the most popular tourists on SpaceX, renting its services at an undisclosed price, but estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. He decided to give three seats to non-famous people.
Hayley Arsenault, 29, will be the youngest American and the first person to have a prosthetic limb in space.
Arsinoe, a childhood cancer survivor, works as a paramedic at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was treated as a child.
The second person is 42-year-old Chris Sembrowski, a former US Air Force soldier who currently works in the aviation industry.
And the last seat is for Sian Proctor, the 51-year-old professor of Earth sciences who nearly became a NASA astronaut in 2009. She will be the fourth African-American woman to go into space.