Four people returned to Earth from a three-day extraterrestrial excursion aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Saturday evening, marking the end of the first-ever flight to Earth’s orbit flown entirely by tourists or otherwise non-astronauts.
The Inspiration4 crew — the mission’s billionaire funder Jared Isaacman, geoscientist Sian Proctor, physician assistant Haley Arceneaux, and data engineer Chris Sembroski — became the first crew to hang out in Earth orbit without any professionally trained astronauts.
“Thanks so much SpaceX, it was a heck of a ride for us,” billionaire and “Inspiration4” mission commander Jared Isaacman could be heard saying over the company’s livestream.
The crew were shown watching movies, and occasionally heard responding to SpaceX’s mission control inside their fully autonomous spacecraft before it began the nail-biting process of re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. After traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the spacecraft used Earth’s own thick blanket of air to slow itself down, with the outside of the craft reaching temperatures up to 3,500º Fahrenheit in the process.
The crew’s splashdown zone in the Atlantic Ocean was roughly 30 miles east of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where they launched to space atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday. Beginning at about 7:02PM ET, Crew Dragon deployed two sets of parachutes — an initial set of two, and a final set of four — to ease its descent toward the ocean. Splashdown happened at around 7:06PM ET. SpaceX recovery teams raced toward the capsule in boats to retrieve the crew.
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“Thanks so much SpaceX, it was a heck of a ride for us, and we’re just getting started” Isaacman told SpaceX’s mission control just after splashing down.
From an on-time launch at 8:02PM ET Wednesday to an on-time splashdown Saturday, the Inspiration4 mission lasted 71 hours total. The objectives of the orbital trek were two-fold: to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, a non-profit that researchers cancer and gives free care to kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases, and conduct a scientific study on how the passengers’ bodies react to microgravity. Since launching on Wednesday, St. Jude raised roughly $20 million, putting the total fundraiser at about $153 million of its $200 million goal, St. Jude said.
For the crew’s three-day trip in orbit, roughly 363 miles high, they video chatted with St. Jude patients, rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange, and kept in touch with friends and family. Isaacman placed a $4,000 bet to Las Vegas that the Eagles would win the Super Bowl, and at another point, remotely chatted with Tom Cruise. They put on a brief talent show on Friday in a livestream update — Sembroski jammed on a ukulele, Proctor showed off a drawing she made using a pack of metallic pens, and Arceneaux did somersaults in microgravity. “Hayley is a champ at spinning,” Proctor said as Arceneaux curled up in a ball and started tumbling in place.
The crew gathered data for a scientific study examining how microgravity affects the human body. During Friday’s video, Arceneaux showed off a device the crew was using to measure cranial pressure.
The Crew Dragon capsule, named Resilience, was the same spacecraft that nearly a year ago sent a four-person crew of government astronauts to the International Space Station and back. Few changes were made to the capsule besides a glass dome that was installed where the capsule’s docking door normally is, giving the passengers a 360-degree view of space while in orbit. The upper half of about three passengers could easily fit inside the dome.
During previous SpaceX Crew Dragon missions — all of which have been flown for NASA and carried professional astronauts to the International Space Station -— the public has had more insight. The space agency and its dozens of communications personnel have worked alongside SpaceX to share practically every moment of the journey from launch until the astronauts dock with the International Space Station.
But this mission left the public largely in the dark when it came to questions about the crew’s schedule and how they were feeling while in orbit. Even though development of the Crew Dragon spacecraft was largely funded by taxpayers and SpaceX rents NASA facilities to support all its missions, Inspiration4 is considered a private, commercial mission. That means SpaceX’s customers only have to be as transparent as they want to be.
There could be several reasons why the space tourists were publicity shy during their trip. It is possible, for example, that the crew wasn’t feeling all that great after first reaching orbit. According to a NASA research paper, “many astronauts report motion sickness symptoms just after arrival in space and again just after return to Earth” and getting a restful night’s sleep in orbit was “also a serious challenge for many crew members aboard shuttle missions.” It’s also possible the four novice space explorers wanted their privacy or simply to enjoy the experience without having to stop to talk about it.
But favorable reviews of their experience could be crucial. SpaceX hopes that this mission will be the first of many like it, building up a new line of business for the company in which it uses Crew Dragon to fly commercial missions with tourists or private researchers rather than just professional astronauts. SpaceX already has contracts for five other private missions, as well as at least four additional NASA-contracted missions.
