SpaceX announced the final two new members for its civilian crew team, preparing to launch the first all-civilian mission to space on the company’s Dragon spacecraft this fall.
Chris Sembroski, 41, an Air Force veteran working for Lockheed Martin, and Dr. Sian Proctor, 51, an entrepreneur, educator, and trained pilot, were revealed on Tuesday as the final two members of the four-person crew, NBC’s Today reported.
The mission, titled The Inspiration4, is slated to launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this fall and tentatively could launch before the end of September.
The new crew members join Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old childhood cancer survivor and a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman.
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Last month, it was revealed Arceneaux would be joining the space mission. Her femur was removed due to cancer at 10 years old, making her both the youngest U.S. citizen to travel to space and the first with a prosthesis.
The civilian space mission is led by Isaacman, who is paying SpaceX founder Elon Musk for the opportunity to be sent to space with the three other crewmates.
“This is a very real moment, but I can’t help but be overwhelmed just thinking about all of the history that came before us here,” Isaacman, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a secure payment processing service, said during an interview at the Kennedy Space Center.
“That’s what’s going through my mind, like the astronauts climbing into the Apollo missions and Skylab and the space shuttle. It’s just so incredible to be here,” he added.
Sembroski was selected for the mission out of nearly 72,000 entries for contributing to a fundraising campaign for St. Jude, which has raised nearly $15 million, not including the additional $100 million Isaacman has donated. The fundraiser expects to raise $200 million for the research facility.
Sembroski was also a Space Camp counselor at the Kennedy Space Center 20 years ago.
Proctor was chosen out of 200 entrants in an independently judged online business competition conducted by the e-commerce platform Shift4Shop.
The crew will have six months of training before the mission commences. The team will orbit the Earth higher than the International Space Station, nearly 335 miles above the planet.
When asked if the civilian crew will be piloting the ship, Musk told NBC, “They could just assume manual control and fly it all over the place. We would recommend against this, but it is one of the possibilities.”
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The Washington Examiner reached out to SpaceX but did not immediately receive a response.
