A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft blasted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in the Inspiration4 mission. After about eleven minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage. It will spend three days in orbit for the first completely private crewed space mission. It opens a further frontier for space tourism but is also linked to a charity campaign for the American St. Jude hospital in Memphis.

The four crew members of the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, all on their first space flight, are:

Jared Isaacman. Businessman and aircraft pilot, he’s the commander of the Resilience. He wanted and financed the Inspiration4 mission as CEO of Shift4 Payments.

Sian Proctor. Geology teacher, she participated in various scientific documentaries. She was an astronaut candidate for NASA in 2009 but was not selected. In her role as a science communicator, she participated in the 2013 Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission that simulated an outpost like the one that could be built on the Moon or Mars. She’s the Resilience pilot.

Hayley Arceneaux. She works at St. Jude hospital and is a bone cancer survivor. She’s the Resilience Chief Medical Officer.

Christopher Sembroski. He works as an engineer for Lockheed Martin and was included in the Resilience crew after another candidate declined the offer.

The Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft is the one used for the first astronaut transport mission to the International Space Station within the normal crew rotation. The Inspiration4 mission doesn’t include docking with the Station, so the docking system was replaced by a cupola that allows the crew to have a view of the outside much better than that of the windows.

The Inspiration4 mission will have strong media coverage including the production of a documentary for Netflix. However, there are very serious objectives such as the fundraising for the St. Jude hospital, specialized in the treatment of childhood diseases and in cancer research, and some scientific experiments will be conducted on the Resilience.

For the Inspiration4 mission, the Resilience spacecraft will reach an altitude of 575 kilometers, approximately 150 kilometers higher than the International Space Station and therefore unusual for orbital space missions. The suborbital flights conducted last July arrived at around 100 kilometers of altitude. The Resilience crew members received training similar to that of “normal” astronauts but this mission shows that even common people can travel in space.

The return to Earth of the Resilience spacecraft is scheduled for September 19 with the splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. The Inspiration4 mission is run independently by SpaceX but NASA provides its support and stressed its role in opening space to private companies. More private missions are already planned, even with the arrival at the International Space Station.