How to watch SpaceX launch the Inspiration4 mission with its all-civilian crew
CBSN
An all-civilian crew braced for blastoff Wednesday evening atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the first privately funded, non-government trip to orbit the Earth. The three-day Inspiration4 mission is devoted to raising $200 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, who chartered the mission, will be joined by Chris Sembroski, an aerospace engineer; Sian Proctor, an artist-educator who will become only the fourth Black woman to fly in space; and Hayley Arceneaux, a childhood cancer survivor who was treated at St. Jude and now works at the hospital. At age 29, Arceneaux will be the youngest American to fly in space.
Blastoff from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 8:02 p.m. EDT, kicking off a 12-minute climb to a 360-mile-high orbit, 100 miles above the International Space Station. It's the highest anyone will have flown since the last shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.