Inspiration4 — first all-civilian orbit

In September 2021, Crew Dragon "Resilience" carried four private citizens — with no professional astronauts aboard — into orbit on the Inspiration4 mission, a first in the history of spaceflight. Commanded by entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, the crew included a St. Jude physician assistant and cancer survivor, a data engineer, and a geoscientist.

The crew orbited the Earth for about three days at an altitude of roughly 585 km — higher than the International Space Station — before splashing down safely. The mission was conceived as a charitable campaign and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Inspiration4 demonstrated that orbital spaceflight was no longer the exclusive domain of government astronauts. It opened the door to a new era of private human spaceflight, with ordinary people — selected in part by public campaign — circling the planet aboard a commercially built spacecraft.