SpaceX on Monday said it is this year aiming to launch the first all-civilian mission into Earth’s orbit, led by a tech billionaire who plans to raffle off one of the spots aboard the craft.
Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman is to be joined by three other novice astronauts for a multiday journey into space, including one lucky winner of a drawing.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure: a journey into outer space on the first all-civilian space flight,” a Web site dedicated to the mission said.
Photo: Reuters
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 seat would go to a worker from St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which treats childhood cancers and pediatric diseases, and the second is to be drawn from those who enter the raffle and are encouraged to donate to the hospital.
A third is to be picked by a panel of judges from entrepreneurs who use an e-commerce 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.
During the multiday mission, the astronauts would orbit Earth every 90 minutes, SpaceX said.
After the mission, the spacecraft would re-enter the atmosphere for a water landing off the Florida coast.
In mid-November last year, four astronauts were successfully carried into orbit by a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and boarded the International Space Station.
The Dragon capsule had just a week prior become the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA since the Space Shuttle nearly 40 years ago.
Its launch vehicle is the reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon deploys parachutes and then splashes down in water, just as in the Apollo era.
In addition to the first commercial mission, SpaceX is scheduled to launch two more crewed flights for NASA this year, including one in the spring, and four cargo refueling missions over the next 15 months.
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