With the pledge of a $50 million donation to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, hopes to assist in exceeding St. Jude’s $200 million fundraising goal set for the Inspiration4 space mission, which took place just last week.
This was the first time a spacecraft has splashed down off the coast of Florida, bringing the first-ever mission to Earth’s orbit with only space passengers to a successful finish.
According to Jared Isaacman, a millionaire and Inspiration4 mission commander, who talked on the company’s livestream, “Thank you very much SpaceX, it was a heck of a voyage.”
Isaacman, in collaboration with Musk, was in charge of raising the necessary funds and directing the expedition’s activities. It was announced that the mission would be a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and by the time the mission’s splashdown occurred on Saturday evening, the total amount raised had reached $160 million. To support the fundraising drive, Isaacman offered a personal contribution of $100 million.
I was one of the passengers on the aircraft from Memphis to Nashville, which included Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old cancer survivor who works as a physician’s assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Following Isaacman’s request, Arceneaux was entrusted to this role by the hospital, which he joyfully accepted on his behalf.
An auction to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is also scheduled for later this month, and it will sell some of the items that the crew transported into space, including signed artefacts and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, that will be auctioned to raise money for the hospital.