A little twirling and some Ukulele: Here’s what the crew did on SpaceX’s spaceflight

Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old data engineer, who is a part of the Inspiration4 crew, created history on Friday when he gave a zero-gravity ukulele performance 100 miles above Earth. Chis is a Lockheed Martin employee and US Air Force veteran who happens to be on the first all-civilian astronaut crew. In a 10-minute show and tell session, he strummed to the tune of a few chords as they flew over Europe. 

SpaceX announced that the crew would return to Earth on Sunday.

“The astronauts spent much of their first 48 hours aloft schmoozing from space, including phone calls with family, friends and supporters such as Musk and Hollywood star Tom Cruise,” mission officials said. The crew also appeared on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday by video linkup for the ringing of the closing bell.

Also Read | SpaceX launch: Purpose of ‘Inspiration4’ mission in a nutshell

For SpaceX’s inaugural astro-tourism flight, Jared Isaacman,chief executive of Shift4 Payments Inc, reportedly paid $200 million to Musk. 

Chris Sembroski was joined by Sian Proctor in demonstrating spaceflight pastimes.

Geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate Sian Proctor displayed a drawing rendered in metallic markers as her in-orbit work. She further described it as that of an actual dragon carrying away the Crew Dragon capsule from Earth.

Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Center in Tennessee twirled excitedly to give the viewers a feel anti-gravity

“Hayley is a champ at spinning. She’s been spinning from the moment we got in orbit,” Proctor said.

Inspiration4 took off on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The capsule reached over 585 km within three hours of the launch, registering the greatest distance covered from Earth by any human since NASA’s Apollo moon program ended in 1972. 

The SpaceX launch comes after Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin’s debut trips to space.