The Inspiration4 flight is scheduled for September 15, marking the first time SpaceX will launch a spacecraft carrying an entirely civilian crew into space without professional astronauts.
Four residents will become astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and will travel into Earth’s orbit, including billionaire Jared Isaacman from New Jersey. Inspiration4 is the first crewed flight to orbit Earth without professional astronauts. Since being selected earlier this year, the crew members have been diligently training for the upcoming flight in just a few weeks.
The crew participating in the Inspiration4 flight includes Hayley Arcenaux (top left), Chris Sembroski (top right), Sian Proctor (bottom left), and Jared Isaacman (bottom right). (Photo: Inspiration4).
Inspiration4 will carry Isaacman along with 29-year-old Hayley Arcenaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Louisiana, data engineer Chris Sembroski from North Carolina, and geoscientist and artist Sian Proctor, a professor at South Mountain Community College in Arizona. Through this spaceflight, Isaacman aims to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
During the flight, the future astronauts will be launched into orbit by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, orbiting Earth for three days before landing. To prepare for this, they have trained for several months, including a team-building hike on Mount Rainier in Washington.
Not only is Arcenaux a physician assistant at St. Jude, but she is also a former patient there, having battled bone cancer since childhood and is now in remission. Arcenaux will call children at the hospital from space and will become the first person with a prosthetic limb to travel into space. The other crew members come from diverse backgrounds, but they are all incredibly excited and enthusiastic about their first journey into space.
For Sembroski, this experience feels somewhat surreal, primarily because he was not originally selected to fly on Inspiration4. Sembroski joined the crew through a fundraising campaign for St. Jude, where a lucky winner would receive a flight seat. The winning donor gifted the flight seat to his friend Sembroski.
The crew will fly aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which is mounted on the Falcon 9 rocket launching from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The flight is expected to take place as early as September 15.
