A 42-year-old data engineer on the first all-civilian astronaut crew to reach orbit made some spaceflight history today, with a zero-gravity ukulele performance in a SpaceX capsule hundreds of miles above Earth's surface.
This September 16, 2021, image courtesy of Inspiration4 shows the Inspiration4 crew member Jared Isaacman communicating while looking out of an observation window while in orbit. Photo: AFP PHOTO / Courtesy of Inspiration4
Chris Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin employee and US Air Force veteran, strummed a few chords for home-bound viewers during a 10-minute show-and-tell session by the four-member Inspiration4 team as they flew at about 28,000km/h over Europe.
SpaceX, the private rocketship company owned by high-tech mogul and Tesla Inc electric automaker CEO Elon Musk, announced afterward that the crew was expected to return to Earth on Saturday local time. Splashdown was set for just after 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) in the Atlantic off Florida's coast, the company said.
The crew's orbital appearance aboard the Crew Dragon capsule was livestreamed over the YouTube channel of SpaceX, which supplied the spacecraft, launched it from Florida and operated it from the company's suburban Los Angeles headquarters.
This screengrab taken from the SpaceX live webcast on September 17, 2021 shows Inspiration4 crew members (from L) Jared Isaacman, Christopher Sembroski holding up a ukelele, Hayley Arceneaux and Sian Proctor holding up her artwork while in orbit. Photo: AFP PHOTO / SPACEX
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, chief executive of the e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments Inc, paid Musk an undisclosed sum for the flight - reported at roughly US$200 million by Time magazine - on what became SpaceX's inaugural astro-tourism flight.
Sembroski was not alone in demonstrating spaceflight pastimes.
Geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate Sian Proctor, 51, showed off a piece of her in-orbit artwork - a drawing rendered in metallic markers that she described as depicting the Crew Dragon capsule being carried away from Earth by an actual dragon.
Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Center in Tennessee, where she was once a childhood cancer patient herself, delighted in twirling about the cabin to give viewers a feel for microgravity.
"Hayley is a champ at spinning. She's been spinning from the moment we got in orbit," Proctor said.
This September 16, 2021, image courtesy of Inspiration4 shows the Inspiration4 crew member Hayley Arceneaux looking out of an observation window while in orbit. Photo: AFP PHOTO / Courtesy of Inspiration4
An attempt to show off spectacular views of Earth through the capsule's wide observation dome, or cupola, was more disappointing as the spacecraft flew into Earth's own shadow, though Proctor said she could see an aurora borealis display in the darkened sky below. It did not show up well on camera for viewers.
Arceneaux also showed off a small plush-toy dog in a white coat, which the crew uses as its zero-gravity environment indicator. When it floats free in the cabin, they know they are in zero-G. The toy is loosely modelled after one of the golden retrievers serving as comfort dogs for young St. Jude patients.
Replicas of the zero-G dog are being sold to raise money for St. Jude as part of the larger Inspiration4 charity mission conceived by Isaacman to benefit the cancer institute.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Crew Dragon capsule lifts off from launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for the first completely private mission to fly into orbit on 15 September in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo: 2021 Getty Images
Inspiration4 blasted off on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Within three hours the crew capsule had reached a cruising orbital altitude of just over 585km - higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope, and the farthest any human has flown from Earth since NASA's Apollo moon program ended in 1972.
To prepare for the crew's return, the spacecraft completed two rocket "burns" on Friday to reduce altitude and line up the capsule's trajectory with the landing site.
The SpaceX launch marked a leap ahead of competitors Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, which are likewise offering rides on rocket ships to customers willing to pay a small fortune.
- Reuters