By Denise Chow - NBC News
Four citizens go into orbit this Wednesday in what is the first mission to space without a professional astronaut on board.
The exclusively civilian crew travels into space aboard a rocket and capsule developed by SpaceX.
The mission, dubbed Inspiration4, is the latest milestone flight this year for private spaceflight companies, following trips to suborbital space by billionaire entrepreneurs Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos over the summer.
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Another billionaire, Jared Isaacman, is poised to lead the historic, exclusively civilian mission.
Isaacman, 38, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a Pennsylvania-based payment processing company, paid an unspecified amount for the three-day expedition on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.
The spacecraft is scheduled to launch on Wednesday aboard a reusable Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The five-hour launch window opens at 8:02 p.m. ET, and SpaceX is planning to broadcast the event live.
Forecasts currently point to a 70% chance that the weather conditions will be favorable for the night launch.
The Crew Dragon capsule will spend three days circling Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida, according to SpaceX.
"Since the beginning of this mission, I have been well aware of how fortunate we are to be a part of this story that SpaceX is creating right now," Isaacman stated Tuesday in a pre-flight briefing, adding that the project is designed to inspire people.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has stated that while the first space tourism flights may be out of reach for all but the wealthiest, these groundbreaking missions will lay the foundation for more regular and affordable space travel. in the future.
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If successful, the Inspiration4 expedition will represent a giant leap for space tourism.
It will also be a boon for SpaceX, which has dominated the private spaceflight industry, even ahead of rivals like Bezos and his aerospace company Blue Origin.
From left to right: Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux sit in the Dragon capsule in Cape Canaveral, Florida, during a launch test on Sunday, September 12, 2021.SpaceX via AP
Joining Isaacman on the trip will be Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a bone cancer survivor who now works as a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Arceneaux, who will act as the crew chief medical officer, will become the youngest American to fly into space.
Chris Sembroski, a 42-year US Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer, and Sian Proctor, 51, a geoscientist and licensed pilot, complete the crew.
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The expedition is part of a charitable initiative to raise money for St. Children's Research Hospital. In addition to donating $ 100 million to St. Jude, Isaacman donated the other three seats from the Inspiration4 flight to his crew members.
Procter, a former NASA astronaut candidate, won her ticket to space through an online contest run by Shift4 Payments.
Sembroski got his seat in a charity drive to raise money for St. Jude.
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The Inspiration4 mission will resemble routine SpaceX flights to the International Space Station (ISS), except this time the capsule will not dock with the orbiting laboratory.
Instead,
the spacecraft will circle the planet 15 times each day from an altitude of nearly 360 miles (579 kilometers)
, higher than the current orbits of the space station and the Hubble space telescope, according to SpaceX.
Although the flight is an important milestone for the space tourism industry, the Inspiration4 crew members will not just travel.
During their three-day expedition, Isaacman, Proctor, Sembroski and Arceneaux will conduct a series of medical experiments that could serve as the basis for future space flights and have applications for human health closer to home.
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Crew members have undergone intensive space flight training since March, including in simulators and zero-gravity flights that offer short periods of microgravity.
In a pre-flight briefing, Proctor spoke of his excitement before launch.
"Since the announcement of the last time we were here, each day has been the best of my life. Each day is better and better," said Proctor from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
