SpaceX has performed a full dress rehearsal with the four members of the Inspiration4 crew ahead of their launch this week.
The September 12 dress rehearsal was conducted at the Kennedy Space Center‘s Pad 39A. Inspiration4 crew Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, and Christopher Sembroski went through every step they’ll follow on launch day up to and including strapping into their seats.
With the completion of the dress rehearsal, the crew is now ready for launch. The five-hour launch window for the Inspiration4 mission is currently slated to open at 00:02 UTC on September 16 (20:02 EDT on September 15).
The mission has been dubbed the first “all-civilian” spaceflight in history. However, this is a little misleading.
NASA is not a part of the armed forces. Although some members of the agency’s astronaut corps have served in various branches of the military, many others have civilian backgrounds. As a result, there have been many all-civilian spaceflights.
A more accurate description of the mission would be the first all-amateur spaceflight. This better describes how the mission is made up of four people who have not been through the rigorous selection and training that professional astronauts are required to undergo.
Just hours after the four-member crew disembarked from the Crew Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX successfully performed a static fire test of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. This is the last major milestone before launch day.
Both the Falcon 9 booster and the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will be utilised for Inspiration4 are flight-proven have previously supported missions to space.
The Falcon 9 booster had previously supported two Space Force missions that deployed a pair of GPS-III satellites. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, which was given the name Resilience by her maiden crew, previously supported Crew-1, the first operational mission of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
