Historic Journey .. 4 Tourists Take to Space on SpaceX
A SpaceX ship carrying an e-commerce billionaire and three less wealthy citizens he chose to participate in the first flight into orbit around the Earth, with an all-civilian crew, set off from the US state of Florida on Thursday.
The flight carrying the group of four space travel enthusiasts, led by the American Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of the e-commerce company "Shift for Bitmains", took off at 8:30 p.m. EDT (0003 today, Thursday GMT) from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In a broadcast of the launch, Isaacman, 38, and fellow crew members Shayan Proctor, 51, Hayley Arsino, 29, and Chris Sembrowski, 42, appeared wedged into the pressurized cabin of a white Crew Dragon capsule. The stars of SpaceX, dubbed "Resilience", are dressed in black and white space suits.
While the capsule floated in the skies of Florida aboard one of the company's reusable "Falcon 9" rockets, it was fitted with a special dome for observation in the place of the usual docking hole.
It is noteworthy that the flight, which is the first manned flight into orbit that does not carry any professional astronauts, is expected to take about three days from the moment of launch until its return, according to the mission official.