Inspiration4 crew circles the Earth on mission's first full day

The crew of the first all-private orbital space mission has spent Thursday, the first full day of the mission, circling the Earth every 90 minutes at over 17,000 mph.

SpaceX reported the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule with four civilians inside was traveling 363 miles high over Asia as of mid-morning, quickly moving over the massive continent. The altitude is a full hundred miles higher than the International Space Station.

That height offers views of the entire planet unlike those space station astronauts see, former NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said during a SpaceX launch live stream.

On Saturday evening, "Dragon and the crew of Inspiration4 will splash down at one of several possible landing sites off the Florida coast," SpaceX said on its website.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the mission at 8:02 p.m. EDT on Wednesday from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.

SpaceX released few images from orbit. One of them showed the spacecraft's cupola, or domed window, facing a bright blue and white Earth in the background.

The mission is the brainchild of billionaire Jared Isaacman, who paid for the other crew members to fly in a fundraiser for Memphis-based St. Jude Children's Research Hospital: Sian Proctor, Haley Arceneaux and Chris Sembroski.

SpaceX plans to show off the mission in an ongoing Netflix documentary, where the views from the cupola are expected to be a highlight.

"Dragon's new cupola observation dome is the largest contiguous space window ever flown. Designed, tested and qualified for flight in six months, it replaced the mechanism used on Dragon's previous flight to autonomously dock to the International Space Station," SpaceX said of the window.

"The three-layer observation dome was put through an extensive qualification process, including thermal, vibration, structural environments and life-cycle to verify capability," the company added.

Arceneaux, who survived childhood cancer, is expected to conduct a live feed with St. Jude patients during the mission.

"Patient Slater and brother Sawyer watched fellow St. Jude patient Hayley aboard the historic @inspiration4x mission," St. Jude posted on Twitter on Thursday morning. "Their father said, 'It's proof that with St Jude, these kids really do overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and even the sky is no longer the limit.'"

'Happy' SpaceX tourist crew spend first day whizzing around Earth
Washington (AFP) Sept 17, 2021 - SpaceX's all-civilian Inspiration4 crew spent their first day in orbit conducting scientific research and talking to children at a pediatric cancer hospital, after blasting off on their pioneering mission from Cape Canaveral the night before.

St Jude tweeted its patients got to speak with the four American space tourists, "asking the questions we all want to know like 'are there cows on the Moon?'"

Billionaire Jared Isaacman, who chartered the flight, is trying to raise $200 million for the research facility.

Inspiration4 is the first orbital spaceflight with only private citizens aboard.

Earlier, Elon Musk's company tweeted that the four were "healthy" and "happy," had completed their first round of scientific research, and enjoyed a couple of meals.

Musk himself tweeted that he had personally spoken with the crew and "all is well."

By now, they should have also been able to gaze out from the Dragon ship's cupola -- the largest space window ever built, which has been fitted onto the vessel for the first time in place of its usual docking mechanism.

- Most humans in space -

The Inspiration4 mission also brings the total number of humans currently in space to 14 -- a new record. In 2009, there were 13 people on the International Space Station (ISS).

There are currently seven people aboard the ISS, including two Russian cosmonauts, and three Chinese astronauts on spaceship Shenzhou-12, which is bound home after its crew spent 90 days at the Tiangong space station.

Isaacman, physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, geoscientist Sian Proctor and aerospace data engineer Chris Sembroski are whizzing around the planet at an altitude that at times reaches 590 kilometers (367 miles).

That is deeper in space than the ISS, which orbits at 420 kilometers (260 miles), and the furthest any humans have ventured since a 2009 maintenance mission for the Hubble telescope.

Their ship is moving at about 17,500 mph (28,000 kph) and each day they will experience about 15 sunrises and sunsets.

Their high speed means they are experiencing time slightly slower than people on the surface, because of a phenomenon called "relative velocity time dilation."

Apart from fundraising for charity, the mission aims to study the biological effects of deep space on the astronauts' bodies.

"Missions like Inspiration4 help advance spaceflight to enable ultimately anyone to go to orbit & beyond," added Musk in a tweet.

The space adventure bookends a summer marked by the battle of the billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to reach the final frontier.

But these flights only offered a few minutes of weightlessness -- rather than the three full days of orbit the Inspiration4 crew will experience, before splashing down off the coast of Florida on Saturday.

Related Links
Rocket Science News at Space-Travel.Com

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SpaceX to launch private, all-civilian crew into Earth orbit
Washington (AFP) Sept 13, 2021
SpaceX is set to launch four people into space Wednesday on a three-day mission that is the first to orbit the Earth with exclusively private citizens on board, as Elon Musk's company enters the space tourism fray. The "Inspiration4" mission caps a summer that saw billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cross the final frontier, on Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin spaceships respectively, a few days apart in July. The SpaceX flight has been chartered by American billionaire Jared Isaacman, t ... read more