'Inspire What Can Be Done Here In Space': Inspiration4 Crew Successfully Splashes Down After 3-Day Space Trip
CAPE CANAVERAL (CBSMimi) – Inspiration4, the first privately funded, all-civilian space crew, successfully splashed down in the Atlantic.
The capsule landed in waters near the Kennedy Space Center, making history.
The civilian crew orbited the Earth fifteen times a day.
"We're seeing the world every 90 minutes," said Mission Commander Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who chartered the flight.
Isaaman and his team did circles around previous adventures in cosmic tourism.
"A big part of our mission here on Inspiration4 is to inspire what can be done here in space," he said.
Crewmember Hayley Arcenaux flipped for micro-gravity.
"Hayley is a champ at spinning as if she's been spinning from the moment we got into orbit," said fellow crewmember Sian Proctor.
Arcenaux's journey was improbable long before she got to space.
At the age of 10, she was a patient at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, where she battled bone cancer.
Nineteen years later, her backstory fueled Inspiration4's goal to raise $200 million for St Jude.
Arceneaux, who is physician assistant at St. Jude, is now the youngest American in space and the first with a prosthesis.
Watching her launch on Wednesday was 6-year-old Mathew Arp, a leukemia patient at St. Jude.
From orbit, Inspiration4's crew took space questions from nine child patients now at St. Jude, including Matthew.
"Are there cows on the moon?" he asked.
"You know, I hope there will be one day," said Proctor.
Next month, a Soyuz capsule will take two Russian civilians to the space station. They're shooting a space movie up there on location where there's no need to build a set.