Elon Musk Confirms SpaceX Will Fly Four Civilians To Space This Year
“The world’s first all-civilian mission” raises money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
SpaceX has confirmed that four individuals will get a chance to aboard its SpaceX Crew Dragon craft to visit the International Space Station (ISS). The mission, dubbed Inspiration4 is scheduled to happen later this year, launching from the Kennedy Space Center as the “world’s first all-civilian mission”.
The main goal of the mission is to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Leading the expedition is Shift4 Payments’ CEO and founder, Jared Isaacman, who is donating two of the three remaining seats on the spacecraft to members of the public. Isaccman has confirmed that one of the seats is “reserved for a St. Jude ambassador with direct ties to the mission.”
The third and fourth crew seats will be decided on via an online competition running between February 1 and 28 of this year. The third seat is expected to open for a lucky contestant who has donated to St. Jude, while the fourth one is for either a new or existing customer of Isaacman’s Shift4Shop e-commerce platform. SpaceX has assured that the seats will go “to crew members who will be selected to represent the mission pillars of leadership, hope, generosity and prosperity.”
In a recent interview, Elon Musk states that the mission’s length of time is entirely up to Isaacman, “If you decide later you want to do a different mission you totally can. You get to go where you want to go. But I think we’re nominally assuming it’s two to four days, but if you want to go longer that’s fine too.”
SpaceX is planning to use Crew Dragon spacecraft, Resilience, which is currently docked at the International Space Station. Musk confirms that NASA is aware of the Inspiration4 mission “and is supportive.”
There is no further information regarding the multi-day journey, but it is expected that all civilians chosen will go through extensive commercial astronaut training from SpaceX.
Announcing the first commercial astronaut mission to orbit Earth aboard Dragon → https://t.co/MbESvnakAD pic.twitter.com/ukLsjFfRjk
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 1, 2021
In case you missed it, FAA is investigating SpaceX over launch license violations during the explosive starship test.
