On September 15, a SPACEX rocket ship launched four people into earth’s orbit. The purpose of this blog is not to share all the amazing facts; if you want to read them, you can do it here. Yes, there has been a lot of space trips going on lately, but I think this one is different for a number of reasons.
First of all, the crew of this mission are all amateur astronauts. Each of the astronauts have a reason for wanting to fly this mission, but the reasons seem to be more philanthropic than with recent space trips. In fact, the financier for this mission was Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of a financial services firm. He financed this mission to raise awareness and donations for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Secondly, these astronauts are going to be spending days in orbit, not minutes. The mission will last three days, from launch to splashdown. For other missions, the goal for the astronauts was to simply check a box that said they entered space, for however brief a period. For SPACEX, there was actually work done while in space.
Lastly, this mission will orbit at 363 miles above the earth, far higher than previous space trips. In fact, for one of the previous space trips, it has been questioned whether or not the capsule even reached what is accepted as “space.”
This mission, still in progress at the time of this writing, is shaping up to be really spectacular.
ATI offers many courses related to Space exploration. You can see our course list here.
And, as always, a full listing of ATI’s courses can be found here.