Last night, SpaceX successfully launched its Inspiration4 spaceship 360 miles above the earth, putting it into an unusually high orbit roughly 100 miles above the International Space Station.
The crew includes a first-ever all-civilian crew and the first-ever space ambassador from the Charlotte area – Kannapolis native Chris Sembroski.
“I always had that interest in solving problems and taking on challenges,” Sembroski told Space.com in an interview earlier this month:
In addition to sending the first Charlotte-area man to space, yesterday’s flight also broke several other milestones, including:
- The first entirely nonprofessional crew to become astronauts
- The first Black female pilot of spaceflight (Sian Proctor)
- The youngest American citizen to fly in space (29-year-old Hayley Arceneaux)
- The first private SpaceX spaceflight
The 4-person crew will spend roughly 3 days orbiting the earth before the SpaceX capsule ‘Resilience’ plans to bring them back to earth in a planned ‘splashdown’ off the Florida coast.