SpaceX’s Inspiration4 private all-civilian orbital mission: Live updates

It’s launch week for SpaceX’s private Inspiration4 mission and the four civilians launching on the site have paid a final trip to their Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon Resilience, the ship that will be their home in space during the 3-day mission.

SpaceX is targeting an 8 p.m. EDT launch on Sept. 15 for the Inspiration4 mission, which will launch Shift4 entrepreneur and billionaire Jared Isaacman into space with crewmates Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski. Isaacman is financing the flight privately and gave away the three seats to his crewmates through fundraising efforts for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“One last touch of our Dragon capsule before launch,” wrote Proctor, Inspiration4’s  pilot and a geoscientist, on Twitter. 

“The awe visiting of our spaceship,” Arceneaux, a physician’s assistant at St. Jude, added. 

“Resilience is ready to roll. She is on the Falcon and it is a beautiful sight!” added Sembroski. 

New launch date

Inspiration4 is now targeting liftoff of no earlier than 8 p.m. EDT on Sept. 15 (midnight Sept. 16 GMT), mission officials announced this morning — a 24-hour slip from the original launch window. 

Teams from SpaceX and Inspiration4 met on Thursday (Sept. 9) for a follow-on flight readiness review and a weather briefing, Inspiration4 officials said in a statement. 

“After evaluating the readiness of the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft, associated ground systems, recovery assets and other key elements of SpaceX’s human spaceflight system, and the current weather forecasts of conditions at the launch site, along the ascent corridor, and at the landing locations off the coasts of Florida for a safe return of the crew a few days later, teams agreed to now target no earlier than 8:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, September 15 for liftoff,” the statement reads.

“This will allow additional time for final preparations, vehicle checkouts and data reviews. SpaceX and Inspiration4 will narrow down the launch window to five hours approximately three days before liftoff,” the statement added.

Inspiration4 crew completes spaceflight training

The four private astronauts launching with SpaceX on the Inspiration4 mission have completed all of their training and will head to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida today for their last days on Earth before liftoff. The launch is targeted for Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 Sept. 15 GMT).

“Our Inspiration4 crew has completed astronaut training at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, CA and is en route to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final preparations and launch!” the Inspiration4 team wrote in an update today. 

Related: Inspiration4: SpaceX’s historic private spaceflight in photos

“At the last meeting today we heard… “Inspiration4 is signed off for spaceflight”… we are now on the way to with a busy schedule right up to launch,” Jared Isaacman, the Shift4 entrepreneur and billionaire financing the flight, wrote in another update.

Isaacman will command the unprecedented three-day private spaceflight with three others, all civilians like him, on the flight. He’ll be joined by geoscientist Sian Proctor as the mission’s pilot; Hayley Arceneaux as medical officer and data engineer Chris Sembroski as mission specialist.  

One week from launch!

SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission, the world’s 1st private all-civilian spaceflight, is now one week away from a planned Sept. 15 launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission, financed by Shift4 entrepreneur and billionaire Jared Isaacman, will launch him and three others on a three-day orbital mission on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon Resilience. Isaacman will be joined by geoscientist Sian Proctor as pilot; and bone cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux and data engineer Chris Sembroski as mission specialists. Arceneaux, who works with St. Jude Children’s Hospital, was selected for the flight, with Proctor and Sembroski nabbing their seats as part of an online contest. 

“Alright, let’s go to space, @rookisaacman,” Arceneaux wrote on Twitter Tuesday (Sept. 7) while sharing a photo of herself and Isaacman boarding a plane. 

The four astronauts-to-be have spent the last few months training to fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience, which launched NASA’s Crew-1 astronauts to the International Space Station in 2020. But the Inspiration4 mission will not visit the station. Instead, it will orbit the Earth and has a huge glass dome in place of its docking port to offer stunning views to the Dragon crew.

Inspiration4 is GO for launch

SpaceX and the Inspiration4 team completed a flight readiness review on Thursday (Sept. 2) and declared the mission “go” for launch on Sept. 15. The exact liftoff time will be determined just a few days before launch. Read the full story.

With just over one week to go until the Inspiration4 launch, we’ll be posting daily updates on the countdown, launch and splashdown here throughout the mission. If you’re looking for more information on the the Inspiration4 mission, check out our Inspiration4 reference page here. 

Our gallery here has the latest Inspiration4 mission photos. You can even watch a new documentary on Netflix to learn more about the flight.