The space station’s first completely private crew of astronauts is welcome on the orbital platform
An artist’s illustration of Axiom modules attached to the International Space Station.
Axiomatic space
The first completely private group of astronauts ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS) were greeted on an orbital research platform Saturday to begin a week-long science mission billed as a milestone in commercial space travel.
They arrived about 9 p.m. after a group of four representing Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc took off on Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, riding atop a Falcon 9 rocket launched by SpaceX .
The Crew Dragon capsule entered orbit on a rocket docked to the ISS at around 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday when the two space vehicles were cruising about 250 miles (420 km) above the central Atlantic Ocean, a live webcast of the coupling from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shows.
The final approach was delayed by about 45 minutes due to technical problems with the video feed used to track the capsule’s rendezvous with the ISS, but otherwise it went smoothly.
The multinational Axiom team, which plans to spend eight days in orbit, is led by retired Spanish-born NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, the company’s vice president of business development. head.
His second-in-command was Larry Connor, a real estate and technology entrepreneur and aerobatic pilot from Ohio assigned to be the mission pilot. Connor is in his 70s, but the company did not provide his exact age.
Surrounding the Ax-1 crew are Israeli investor-philanthropist and former fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, both professionals. mission family.
With docking achieved, it took nearly two hours for the sealed passage between the space station and the crew capsule to be pressurized and tested for leaks before the hatch was opened to allow new astronauts to board the ISS. .
Team Ax-1 was greeted by all seven of the regular government-paid crew members who occupied the space station: three American astronauts, one German astronaut from the Agency European Cosmonaut and three Russian cosmonauts.
NASA’s webcast shows four smiling Axiom astronauts, wearing blue flying suits, with their heads floating, one by one, through the entrance to the space station, being warmly greeted by the ISS crew with balloons hug and shake hands.
Lopez-Alegria then attached the astronaut wings to the uniforms of three of his Axiom team’s spaceship recruits – Connor, Stibbe and Pathy – in a brief welcome ceremony.
Stibbe is now the second Israeli to fly into space, after Ilan Ramon, who was killed along with six NASA crew members in the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster.
Science focus
The newcomers brought with them two dozen scientific and biomedical experiments to conduct aboard the ISS, including research into brain health, heart stem cells, cancer and aging, as well as demonstrations of manufacturing technology. optical output using the surface tension of liquids in microgravity.
The mission, a partnership between Axiom, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, and NASA, is seen by all three as an important step forward in expanding commercial activities in space shared by those on the call. is the low Earth orbit economy, or “LEO economy for short”.
This trend will help the US space agency focus more resources on major scientific discoveries, including the Artemis program to return humans to the moon and eventually to the stars, NASA officials say. Fire.
Although the space station occasionally hosts civilian tourists, the Ax-1 mission marks the first commercial crew of astronauts sent to the ISS for its intended purpose as an orbital research laboratory.
The Axiom mission is also SpaceX’s sixth human flight in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the space station and September’s Inspiration 4 launch that sent an all-civilian crew to the space station. religion for the first time. That flight did not dock with the ISS.
Axiom executives say their astronaut projects and plans to build a private space station in Earth’s orbit go far beyond the astrology tourism services offering thrill-seekers. strong feelings of companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned by billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard. Branson.
