SpaceX Aims to Launch ‘All-Civilian’ Trip into Orbit

SpaceX announced Monday that it intends to launch the first all-civilian mission into Earth's orbit this year, led by a tech billionaire who is planning to unload one of the spots on the craft.  

Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman will be joined by three other novice astronauts on a multi-day journey into space, including one lucky draw winner, reports AFP.   

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure: a journey into outer space on the first all-civilian space flight,” according to a website dedicated to the mission.

SpaceX, the company started by Elon Musk, said Isaacman is “donating the three seats alongside him… to individuals from the general public who will be announced in the weeks ahead.”

Launch of the Dragon spacecraft is being targeted for “no earlier than the fourth quarter of this year”, the firm said.

One is to go to a worker at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital who is treating childhood cancers and pediatric diseases, and the other is to be drawn from those who enter the raffle and are encouraged to donate to the hospital.

A third will be picked by a panel of judges from entrepreneurs who use an ecommerce tool from Isaacman’s company, Shift4 Payments.

All three crewmembers “will receive commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft,” as well as orbital mechanics and stress testing, including operating in micro- or zero gravity, the statement said.

SpaceX says that during the multi-day mission, the astronauts will orbit Earth every 90 minutes.

After the mission, the spacecraft will reenter the atmosphere for a water landing off the Florida coast.

In mid-November 2020, four astronauts were successfully transported to orbit via the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and boarded the International Space Station.

The Dragon capsule had just been the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA since the Space Shuttle almost 40 years ago. Its launch vehicle is the new SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon deploys parachutes and splashes down into the water, just as it did in the Apollo era.

NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing after shutting down the Space Shuttle program in 2011, which failed to achieve its main objectives of making space travel affordable and safe.

The agency will have spent more than $8 billion on the Commercial Crew program by 2024, with the hope that the private sector can take care of NASA’s needs in “low Earth orbit” so it is freed up to focus on return missions to the Moon and then on to Mars.

In addition to the first commercial mission, SpaceX is scheduled to launch two more crewed flights for NASA in 2021, including one in the spring, and four cargo refueling missions over the next 15 months.