On Sept 15, 2021, the night sky in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, lit up and the rumble(隆隆声) of engines of a 70-meter-tall Falcon9 rocket set off car alarms. Atop that rocket was a group of four civilians in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft prepared to make history.
This is the first mission to Earth's orbit crewed(当工作人员)entirely by tourists, or those not professionally trained as astronauts. For three days, the four civilians aboard the spacecraft traveled in orbit around Earth as part of the mission dubbed(被称为) Inspiration 4. The name of the mission itself is fitting.
In late 2020, the mission leader Jared Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur, announced that he would like to fund a spaceflight that differed from other billionaire space journeys. His would be part of an effort to raise funds for St Jude Children's Hospital.
"He knew he would be using those seats to carry out his mission objective of inspiring humanity while raising money for children's cancer research, "Scientific American wrote. In addition to Issacman, the crew included 29-year-old Hayley Arceneux, who is not only a childhood cancer survivor, but a current St. Jude physician assistant; Sin Procotor, 51, a geologist and community college teacher, and Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old lifelong space fan who got his seat through an online raffle(抽奖活动), CNN reported,
This particular Dragon spacecraft did not visit the International Space Station, but it did reach 590 kilometers above Earth. This is" higher than the current orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope, an altitude that humans haven't reached since the Hubble servicing missions during the space shuttle program".
While there is certainly a long way to go before SpaceX achieves its goal of ferrying civilians to Mars at an accessible price, this mission is definitely making its mark on space travel--all for a good cause. According to CNN, at a press briefing on Sept 14. Sembroski told reporters that joining the Inspiration4 mission felt like "we're writing the rules, we're breaking a couple of them that NASA used to demand…We get to kind of do things our own way."
