Representatives for SpaceX’s first privately chartered flight revealed Friday that the actor took part in a call with four space tourists, who were orbiting more than 360 miles away.
Tom Cruise gets a sneak preview of what it’s like to orbit Earth in a SpaceX capsule.
Representatives for SpaceX’s first privately chartered flight revealed Friday that the actor took part in a call with four space tourists, who were orbiting more than 360 miles away. Thursday’s talks, like the entire three-day flight, were private and so no details were released.
“Maverick, you can be our wingman anytime,” announced the flight’s Twitter feed. Cruise starred as Navy pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the 1986 film “Top Gun”. A sequel comes out next year.
Last year, NASA confirmed that it was in talks with Cruise about visiting the International Space Station for filming. SpaceX will provide lift, as it does for NASA astronauts, and as it did for the billionaire on Wednesday night, now with two of its competition winners and a hospital worker.
They are flying extremely high in an automated capsule, even by NASA standards.
SpaceX put them into a 363-mile (585-kilometer) orbit after launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday night. It is 100 miles (160 kilometers) higher than the International Space Station. It is so high that those stations are completing 15 orbits of Earth per day, compared to 16 for astronauts.
Until this all-amateur crew, relatively few NASA astronauts had climbed that height. The most recent were shuttle astronauts who served on several flights aboard the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s and 2000s.
To amplify the views, SpaceX outfitted the Dragon capsule with a custom, bubble-shaped dome. Photos of him gazing out of this large window were posted online on something otherwise publicly released from his first day in space.
Their flight ends this weekend with a splashdown off the Florida coast.
In addition to speaking with Cruise, four capsule passengers interacted with young cancer patients on Thursday.
Childhood cancer survivor Hayley Arsinaux leads a classroom conversation with patients at the hospital that saved her life nearly 20 years ago: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A child wanted to know if there were cows on the moon – as in a nursery rhyme.
“I hope that happens one day. Right now, no, there aren’t,” replied another passenger, Sean Proctor. “We’re going to be going back to the Moon soon and we’re going to investigate all kinds of things about it.”
The video linkup was not broadcast live, but was shared by St. Jude on Friday, which also included a shot of the Archinox showing the dome looking bigger than him.
It’s “so beautiful” to see Earth from such a height, she said.
Now a physician assistant at St. Jude, Arsinox took an old photo of himself – bald from bone cancer treatment – at age 10. She said before the flight that she wanted children to see her long hair floating in weightlessness, to give them hope.
At 29 years old, Arceneaux is the youngest American in space.
Pennsylvania entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, 38, bought the entire flight for an undisclosed amount. He’s trying to raise $200 million for St. Jude through a flight he named Inspiration4, half of which comes from his own pocket.
Two other Dragon riders won their seats through a pair of competitions sponsored by Isaacman: Chris Sambrowski, 42, a data engineer, and Proctor, 51, a community college teacher.
All four shared SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s quest to open up space for all.
“Mission like Inspiration 4 helps advance spaceflight to eventually enable anyone to orbit and beyond,” Musk tweeted Thursday after chatting with his orbiting pioneers.
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