SpaceX plans on upping the ante by sending four civilians aboard the Crew Dragon capsule into orbit around Earth. The trip is expected to commence in the fourth quarter of 2021.
The flight will be commanded by Jared Issacman founder and CEO of Shift4Payments who also happens to be a trained pilot. He has donated three seats alongside him aboard the Dragon spacecraft. People shortlisted to be on the spacecraft will be revealed in the coming weeks.
The mission is dubbed Inspiration4 which will see this as an opportunity to raise support for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It is expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2021 basically towards its end.
SpaceX said, The Inspiration4 crew will receive commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing. They will go through emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial and full mission simulations.
The journey that will take place multiple days will have the crew orbit Earth every 90 minutes through a custom flight path. The entire mission will be closely monitored by the experts down at mission control.
Elon Musk said, This is an important milestone toward enabling access to space for everyone.