Successful Historic All-Civilian Spaceflight Mission

15 Sep 2021, 6:30 pm

The countdown has been complete for a mission like we’ve never seen before: Inspiration4!

Liftoff of @Inspiration4X! Go Falcon 9! Go Dragon! pic.twitter.com/NhRXkD4IWg

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 16, 2021

This is the first-ever all-civilian human spaceflight aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

***Inspiration4 crew arrives in Florida. Top to Bottom: Jared Isaacman, Chris Sembroski, Dr. Sian Proctor, and Hayley Arceneaux. Photo credit: Inspiration4 / John Kraus***

The historic launch will take four crew members into orbit – a pilot, a physician assistant who is a cancer survivor, a technician from Lockheed Martin and U.S. Air Force Veteran, and a geoscientist representing leadership, hope, generosity, and prosperity.

**Rollout at Launch Complex 39A. Left to Right: Chris Sembroski, Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, and Dr. Sian Proctor. Photo credit: Inspiration4 / John Kraus**

The multi-day journey goal is to raise awareness and funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and include scientific research to aid in advancing human health back home as well as in space.

About the author

Meredith Garofalo

Meredith is a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist as designated by the American Meteorological Society. She was born and raised in Cleveland but has worked from coast to coast covering almost every type of weather. Meredith is a weather, space, and STEM journalist and has been live out in the field during destructive tropical storms on the Gulf Coast of Florida, raging wildfires in Southern Cali... Load Morefornia, and covered the wreckage from tornadoes in the Great Plains. In 2009, she reported on the damaging hail storm during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and in 2017, the historic California winter storms that produced record rain totals and devastating flash flooding. Prior to joining WeatherNation, Meredith worked at KEYT/KKFX in Santa Barbara, CA, KOTA-TV in Rapid City, SD, WWSB-TV in Sarasota, FL, and began her career as an intern at WGN-TV in Chicago. She was Santa Barbara's "Favorite Weathercaster of the Year" in 2016 and the Community Partner of the Year in 2017 for her volunteer work with Make-A-Wish Tri-Counties and awarded with the 2018 Valparaiso University Alumni Association First Decade Achievement Award. Meredith is the current chair of the American Meteorological Society's Station Scientist Committee, which focuses on raising greater awareness & outreach when it comes to science education for viewers. She's also an accomplished journalist, producing weather and science stories including rocket launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base and the new GOES-16 satellite and it's impacts on weather forecasting. Meredith was personally invited by NASA's Johnson Space Center to interview astronauts on the International Space Station and was the only meteorologist in the nation to do an exclusive report accompanying the GOES-West satellite from Colorado to Florida, reporting on and covering it's launch in 2018. Meredith's also worked on features that took her paragliding along the coast, white water rafting in Northern California, learning to surf in the Pacific Ocean, and how to be an aerial photographer while flying a single engine plane! Say hi on Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn!