Netflix Documentary Series Will Follow First All-Civilian Space Mission

Netflix will chronicle the first all-civilian space trip next month in five-part docuseries Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission To Space.

Billed as "the first Netflix documentary series to cover an event in near real-time," the show takes viewers behind the scenes as crew members Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Christopher Sembroski, and Sian Proctor prepare for and return from their historic flight.

Strapped to a reusable Falcon 9 spacecraft, the Inspiration4 mission, organized by SpaceX, is set for launch no earlier than Sept. 15 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The four-person team will orbit Earth every 90 minutes for three days before reentering our atmosphere for a soft water landing off the Atlantic coast.

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Following an unconventional release model, episodes will premiere in pairs: one and two on Sept. 6 and three and four on Sept. 13—two days before the targeted launch of the Inspiration4 mission. A feature-length finale will air at the end of the month.

"The final episode, which premieres just days after the mission is completed, will feature unprecedented access inside the spacecraft capturing the launch and the crew's journey to space, as well as their return home to Earth," according to an Inspiration4 press release.

Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Isaacman financed the Inspiration4 mission and will pilot the autonomous Crew Dragon spacecraft. But the 38-year-old businessman isn't going alone. In collaboration with St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, he donated a trio of seats to raise money for the Memphis health center.

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Each person represents one of four mission pillars: leadership (Isaacman), hope (Arceneaux), generosity (Sembroski), and prosperity (Proctor). They received commercial astronaut training—orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing—and participated in emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, and partial- and full-mission simulations.

Crew members will also answer kids' cosmic questions in A StoryBots Space Adventure, a hybrid live-action/animation special set to hit Netflix on Sept. 14. There is no word on how, or if, this schedule might change if takeoff is delayed.