Elon Musk is making a big donation!
On Saturday (Sept. 18), Tesla’s CEO pledged $50 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to help push the Inspiration4 spaceflight mission ahead of its fundraising goal.
“Count me in for $50M,” he wrote in response to a tweet from the official Inspiration4 account that said they were still looking to meet their goal.
The objective of the mission was to raise $200 million for the organization. The all-civil flight began on Wednesday and landed back on Earth on Saturday.
According to CNBC, the mission raised $60.2 million in donations and saw $100 million from Inspire 4 member and billionaire Jared Isaacman, bringing the total to more than $210 million.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Resilience launched Wednesday at 8:02 a.m. from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the same departure point for the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.
The crew included Jared Isaacman, 29-year-old cancer survivor Hayley Arsinaux, geologist and artist Dr. Sean Proctor and data engineer Christopher Sambrowski.
The private crew spent three days in space, orbiting Earth at an altitude of 590 kilometers, which is above the International Space Station and the farthest humans have traveled above the surface in years.