Cape Canaveral: SpaceX’s first space tourists are taking sweeping views of Earth that few have seen and inspired children with cancer.
The four passengers of the capsule are flying very high even by NASA’s standards.
SpaceX put them in a 363-mile (585-km) orbit after their launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday night. It is 100 miles (160 km) higher than the International Space Station. It is so high that those stations are completing 15 orbits of Earth per day, compared to 16 for astronauts.
Until this all-amateur crew, relatively few NASA astronauts had climbed that height. The most recent were shuttle astronauts who served on several flights aboard the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s and 2000s.
To amplify the views, SpaceX outfitted the automated Dragon capsule with a custom, bubble-shaped dome. Photos of him looking out this large window after his first day in space were posted online, but very few have been released publicly since liftoff.
The passengers – two contest winners, a hospital worker and their billionaire sponsor – will wrap up their three-day flight with a splashdown to the Florida coast this weekend, weather permitting.
Hayley Arceneaux, a childhood cancer survivor, chatted Thursday with patients at the hospital that saved her life nearly 20 years ago: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. According to a tweet, the children wanted to know if there were cows on the moon – like in nursery rhymes. The video linkup was not broadcast live.
Now a physician assistant at St. Jude, Arsinox took an old photo of himself – bald from bone cancer treatment – at age 10. She said before the flight that she wanted children to see her long hair floating in weightlessness, to give them hope.
At 29 years old, Arceneaux is the youngest American in space.
Pennsylvania Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, 38, bought the entire flight for an undisclosed amount. He’s trying to raise $200 million for St. Jude through a flight he named Inspiration4, half of which comes from his own pocket.
Two other Dragon riders won their seats through a pair of competitions sponsored by Isaacman: Chris Sambrowski, 42, a data engineer, and Sean Proctor, 51, a community college teacher.
All Four Share SpaceX Founders Elon MuskSeeking open space for all.
“Mission like Inspiration 4 helps advance spaceflight to eventually enable anyone to orbit and beyond,” Musk tweeted Thursday after chatting with his orbiting pioneers.
The four passengers of the capsule are flying very high even by NASA’s standards.
SpaceX put them in a 363-mile (585-km) orbit after their launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday night. It is 100 miles (160 km) higher than the International Space Station. It is so high that those stations are completing 15 orbits of Earth per day, compared to 16 for astronauts.
Until this all-amateur crew, relatively few NASA astronauts had climbed that height. The most recent were shuttle astronauts who served on several flights aboard the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s and 2000s.
To amplify the views, SpaceX outfitted the automated Dragon capsule with a custom, bubble-shaped dome. Photos of him looking out this large window after his first day in space were posted online, but very few have been released publicly since liftoff.
The passengers – two contest winners, a hospital worker and their billionaire sponsor – will wrap up their three-day flight with a splashdown to the Florida coast this weekend, weather permitting.
Hayley Arceneaux, a childhood cancer survivor, chatted Thursday with patients at the hospital that saved her life nearly 20 years ago: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. According to a tweet, the children wanted to know if there were cows on the moon – like in nursery rhymes. The video linkup was not broadcast live.
Now a physician assistant at St. Jude, Arsinox took an old photo of himself – bald from bone cancer treatment – at age 10. She said before the flight that she wanted children to see her long hair floating in weightlessness, to give them hope.
At 29 years old, Arceneaux is the youngest American in space.
Pennsylvania Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, 38, bought the entire flight for an undisclosed amount. He’s trying to raise $200 million for St. Jude through a flight he named Inspiration4, half of which comes from his own pocket.
Two other Dragon riders won their seats through a pair of competitions sponsored by Isaacman: Chris Sambrowski, 42, a data engineer, and Sean Proctor, 51, a community college teacher.
All Four Share SpaceX Founders Elon MuskSeeking open space for all.
“Mission like Inspiration 4 helps advance spaceflight to eventually enable anyone to orbit and beyond,” Musk tweeted Thursday after chatting with his orbiting pioneers.
.