In a few weeks, four civilians will travel with SpaceX around the planet without the presence of a professional astronaut. In the meantime, it's time to prepare. On the program:centrifuge, climbing and flying lessons.
Jared Isaacman, Founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments; Hayley Arceneaux, employee of St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Sian Proctor, professor at Community University in Tempe (Arizona); Christopher Sembroski, engineer for Lockheed Martin. Together, they will be the first four people to fly into space unaccompanied by a professional astronaut on SpaceX's first all-civilian mission.
For this flight, the four crew members will integrate the company's Resilience capsule to circle the Earth several times at an altitude of approximately 570 km. Note that there are also plans for a glass dome to be installed at the top of the ship to provide occupants with a 360-degree view of space and Earth. The launch of this historic mission is still scheduled for September 15 .
Flying into space requires minimal preparation. Also, for several weeks, the crew has been training. As soon as the mission was officially announced, everyone boarded the centrifuge at the National Aerospace Training and Research Center (NASTAR), in Pennsylvania, to experiment with G forces (gravitational forces) they will feel during their journey.
After their time in the centrifuge, the crew then prepared for a perilous trek up the side of Mount Rainier, Washington, aiming for a camp of base placed at altitude.
Escapes like this are a tradition and an important part of astronaut training before their missions. The objective is to place the crew in an environment that forces them to work together to face unexpected obstacles, thereby promoting group cohesion .
After braving the elements together, the crew members then reunited for the first time at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. There they began to familiarize themselves with the ship that will carry them into space. The flight, we remind you, will be totally autonomous . Sian Proctor, who will be the pilot of the mission, must nevertheless learn to master "the beast" in the event of a problem.
The four teammates have four months left to prepare before the mission takes off in September. And the training is not over. It will notably be a question, for Sian Proctor and his Commander Jared Isaacman, of piloting jet planes. NASA astronauts must indeed log a certain number of flight hours with T-38 aircraft. This expedition will therefore be strongly inspired by and modeled on that of professional astronauts.
