Civilian SpaceX crew 'grateful' ahead of launch
A day ahead of blast-off, the all civilian crew of a SpaceX rocketship held a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The so-called Inspiration 4 mission is notable for sending four astronauts with minimal space training into outer space and sending them to an orbit of about 575 kilometers.
Senior director of the programme, Bejamin Reed:
"Now, this is significant and historic because it's going to be the highest that any humans have gone into orbit since the Hubble servicing missions.
And in fact, they'll be above the current orbit of the Hubble and above the current orbit of the International Space Station."
Team leader and founder of e-commerce firm Shift4Payments Jared Isaacman said despite additional risks getting to that height, it's important for the sake of future missions.
"If we're going to, you know, go to the moon again and we're going to go to Mars and beyond, and we got to get a little outside of our comfort zone and take that next step in that direction."
The spaceship's pilot is geoscientist Sian Proctor, who joined the team through an online contest run by Shift4Payments.
"There have been three black female astronauts that have made it to space and knowing that I'm going to be the fourth means that I have this opportunity to not only accomplish my dream, but also inspire the next generation of women of color and girls of color and really get them to think about reaching for the stars."
Rounding out the crew are "chief medical officer" Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and mission "specialist" Chris Sembroski, 42, a U.S. Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer.
Their vehicle, dubbed "Resilience", is set to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center Wednesday evening, and will carry them three days in space before splashing down in the Atlantic.
Netflix is set to live-stream the count-down and blast-off on their Youtube Page.
