Inspiration4

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Inspiration4 was the first orbital spaceflight crewed entirely by private citizens, with no professional astronaut aboard. Launched on 16 September 2021 from the Kennedy Space Center, it flew on a SpaceX Crew Dragon named Resilience, the same capsule that had carried NASA astronauts to the Space Station a year before. The mission was conceived and paid for by the entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who commanded the flight and gave the other three seats away to represent a theme: Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant and childhood-cancer survivor who became the youngest American to reach orbit and the first person to fly with a prosthetic body part; Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and pilot; and Chris Sembroski, a data engineer who won his place through a fundraising draw. Unlike most Dragon flights the capsule did not dock with anything; instead it flew free for about three days, orbiting higher than the Space Station, at roughly 585 kilometres, with its docking adapter replaced by a large glass dome that gave the crew a sweeping view of the Earth. The four had trained for months but were, in the language of spaceflight, ordinary people, and their flight was framed as a charitable venture, raising more than 240 million dollars for St Jude Children's Research Hospital. They splashed down off the Florida coast on 18 September. Inspiration4 helped open orbit to private travellers and was a forerunner of the more ambitious Polaris flights that followed, on which Isaacman would later attempt the first commercial spacewalk.

1. 2021Launch on a Falcon 9Launch

   Crew Dragon 'Resilience' lifts the first all-civilian crew to orbit from Kennedy Space Center.

2. 2021First all-civilian orbital crewMilestone

   Four private citizens fly with no professional astronaut aboard.

3. 2021Higher than the Space StationOrbiter

   The free-flying capsule orbits at about 585 km, viewing Earth through a large glass dome.

4. 2021Atlantic splashdownSplashdown

   After three days the crew returns to a parachute splashdown off the Florida coast.

5. 2021Raising funds for St JudeMilestone

   The flight raises more than 240 million dollars for childhood-cancer research, its founding purpose.

Images

Images from open archives · credit shown per image