Miami, United States
SpaceX announced Monday that it will launch the Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, responsible for the Inspiration4 mission, “the world’s first fully commercial astronaut” to orbit the Earth for “several days.” “
SpaceX said in a statement that the launch, with a crew of four civilians, will be from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Elon Musk’s company has pointed out that Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, one of the four crew members who will be aboard the Dragon, will donate the other three seats to the general public, which will be announced in the coming weeks.
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The Inspiration4 crew will receive commercial training of astronauts from SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft, orbital mechanics, microgravity operation, zero gravity and other tests.
Civilians will go through “emergency preparedness training, spacecraft and space suit entry and exit exercises, as well as partial and complete mission simulations,” the statement said.
This multi-day journey, which orbits the Earth every 90 minutes along a custom flight path, will be closely monitored at every step by the control of the SpaceX mission.
Upon completion of the mission, the Dragon will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere to splash off the coast of Florida. The company said the mission would be completed “no earlier than the fourth quarter of this year.”
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He recalled that in 2020 SpaceX “returned the ability” of the United States to transport NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time since the last flight of the Space Shuttle in 2011.
He pointed out that in addition to NASA’s flying staff, the Dragon was also designed to carry commercial astronauts into Earth orbit, ISS or beyond.
Last week, Axiom Space announced the crew that it will be part of the first private mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which will probably arrive early next year aboard a SpaceX capsule.
Led by Hispanic-American Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut who has already been in four other space missions, Axiom 1 (Ax-1) Mission will leave Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA) with American Larry Connor , Canadian Mark Pathy and Israeli Eytan Stibbe on board.