What to know about the all-civilian SpaceX crew set to launch into orbit

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferre reports details on the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission set to kick off today.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, a new milestone in space flight we want to get to. Four private citizens set to launch into orbit tonight on Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket with no professional astronaut on board. And as for right here now with more, Ines.

INES FERRE: Alexis, the mission is called Inspiration4, an all civilian mission on SpaceX's Dragon capsule. And these are not professional astronauts, but they did get extensive astronaut training. So the people you're seeing there are commander Jared Isaacman, 38 years old, CEO and founder of Shift4 Payments. He's the one that funded this mission, and he donated the other seats to St. Jude's Hospital.

St. Jude's hospital chose a 29-year-old physician's assistant at St. Jude. She's a cancer survivor. She will be the youngest American to go into orbit, and she will serve as medical officer. Also, Dr. Proctor, she's a 51-year-old geologist, a STEM educator. She'll be the fourth African-American woman to go into orbit. She won that seat via an online contest.

And then, you also have Christopher Sembroski. He is a Lockheed Martin employee. He's worked in the aerospace industry, he's been in the Air Force. He'll be a mission specialist. He got that seat because his friend won a raffle-- a St. Jude's raffle-- that he won that seat and then he gifted it to Sembroski.

So they will be spending three days in orbit, orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 575 kilometers. Just to give you an idea, Alexis, the International Space Station is around 422 kilometers so they're going even beyond that. This is a very significant mission, a very significant mission when it comes to civilians in orbit. And of course, being such an event of their lifetime, they will also have time to do experiments with microgravity.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Wow, really exciting for those folks, and a big milestone there in space flight for civilians. Ines Ferre, thanks so much.